


The Crimson Claws

by Greyforrester



Series: Edward Orson Stories [8]
Category: Amalgam Comics, Just Cause (Video Games)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blood and Violence, F/M, Gun Violence, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:48:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28305576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greyforrester/pseuds/Greyforrester
Summary: Edward Orson is laid low by an attack by an armoured man with burning blood and metal claws. He sends a message out to Amalgamated Justice only to ally with their sister group; Birdforce. The Claws are guided by the Illuminati to steal weapons from Solis and Medici which could plunge the world into chaos.
Series: Edward Orson Stories [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1688788





	The Crimson Claws

Prologue: K. Rool To Be Kind

Edward and Veritas stood at the foot of a gargantuan metal structure constructed in the image of a metal, obese crocodilian standing on two legs atop a metal rock, a crown stood atop it's head.

“See that,” Edward pointed at it's belly, there was what looked like the insulator of an electrical pylon protruding from it, “that's the barrel of his superweapon, and all the cause we need to destroy it. King K. Rool means to activate it and finally finish off Kong Island.”

“You told me yourself,” Veritas objected, “it's been standing there for over two decades. So why now?”

“My guess is because a majority of the Kongs who protect their eponymous island are comatose, and 'Scaly the Glutton' up there just won't let a grudge go.” Edward flashed the dark blue tear on his left hand and opened a portal up. The two stood through to find themselves on a catwalk beside the mouth of the enormous metal crocodile. Edward materialised Stormcaster and threw it against the jaw of the metal reptilian structure, after a few hits the jaw dropped, revealing an opening in its throat.

Inside lay a mass of molten rock bubbling in a vat between them and an entrance on the other side, obstructed by a large signpost with a face and arms, attach atop his eyes was a picture of glossy yellow bananas and on his teeth were three digits displaying the number '100'. A blue bipedal reptile, arms muscled thicker than his head and hair bleached white ran up to them from their side.

“No entry without fee, or you'll go SPLAT!” he threatened.

Edward gestured for Vert to halt, clenching his right hand, the silhouette of a moth-like creature floated above the Omnitrix Module on the back of his hand as the circular dial in the middle popped out. The dial popped back in, changing the armour Edward wore from it's usual white and grey to black and blue, six lenths unfurled from his back, two formed a hood while the other formed robes around him.

“Be cool,” the newly changed Edward hissed, blowing a cloud out of the vents of his face-plate onto the buff bouncer. It staggered backward, sinking onto its front and curling up, it began to snore. Ed then turned to the glowing pit of hot rock, blowing another cloud on it. After a violent hissing and crackling noise, the mass cooled into a hard, dark grey surface. Ed strolled across the cooled floor, continuing to blow frigid matter as he travelled to the other side.

“B. Locker,” Edward whispered at the sentient signpost, “I though you'd be wood-worm food by now, what brings you to back here?”

“My cut of the entrance fee,” he answered stubbornly.

“Consider the greater economics; if DK Island goes 'boom', they'll stop being grown.”

“So? I'll 'ave other jobs, wiff other fees.”

“No you won't,” Edward snarled at him.

“Yes. I. wiuw.”

“Lanky Kong squeezed past you once and Chunky got through you with a giant punch, guess which one I’ll try.” He cooly threatened.

“Hrmm, believe you me, I'm gonna 'ave a word wiff the Gatekeepers Union 'bout this!” He protested before vanishing.

Marching inside, they were accosted by a rotund reptile carrying several limes on a strap around his belly. The corpulent crocodile tossed one of the limes at them, however Edward reflexively froze the fruit as it bounced towards them, watching it shatter as it smashed into the ground. He turned to Vert and gestured towards their would-be assailant, Vert transformed, shedding much of her clothing and growing large and musclebound. She charged at the large Kremling like a bullet, sandwiching him between her and a wall.

“What was that he threw at us?” Vert asked.

“Explosive lime. Yeah, don't ask.... take the belt,” Edward advised.

Vert blolted up a sloped corridor, Edward unfurled his cloak into two pairs of wings and floated up it. Past it was a round room, bare aside form the rust and the supporting pillar in the center. From behind the pillar they were accosted by a large metallic automaton resembling a crocodile, it had a wind-up key protruding from its back and hostile designs on the two.

“I got this,” Edward assured. Spinning Stormcaster, he knocked the head off it, sending it zipping across the room. Edward pointed to a large switch on the wall over on the other side and Vert picked up the beheaded 'bot and threw it, sending it crashing into it. A wall opened up, revealing a corridor with more molten lava, Ed cooled it with more frigid breaths. The previously perilous pathway lead to another similarly empty room aside from a small pipe leading through the wall, on the other side. He took the bandoleer of fruit-like explosives, taking one and tossing the rest in the pipe, he then enveloped them in a dark-blue glow, forcing them in further.

“When I chuck this thing in, you mash that pipe shut, and I mean **tight**,” he stressed, pulling the pin on the lime and throwing it in. Vert pounded on the pipe, sealing it up completely. The wall around it burst open, the two headed through it into another, much taller room. In its centre was a tall apparatus; electricity flowed visibly from five pipes which extended out from it into the ground, around it were dozens of consoles on the ground floor and the floor above, the latter of which were surrounded by a catwalk. Edward extended his right hand, pointing his index and middle fingers at it, they merged together to form what resembled a tuning fork. The consoles began to flicker and spark and the electricity flowing from the pipes began to glow much brighter.

“If Snide and his blueprints are accurate, which so far they look to be, we'll have 50 minutes.” Edward explained. “Hmm, that way,” he pointed at a nearby catwalk and the door through it. The two walked through it, leading to a room with several more consoles, a pair of windows surrounded a wooden ship wheel. A crew of couple of lanky crocodile-men and one dog-like croc stood between them and the door to the throne.

“I don't know if you care to check, but I just overloaded your big electro-gun thing. Consider that your eviction notice.” He warned, he threw Stormcaster shattering a window before sending it back to his hand. The lanky henchmen bolted through the opening he made, while the dog-like croc had wrapped it's teeth around Veritas' leg. She shook it off, only to find its teeth and gums still, to her revulsion, stuck in her ankle.

Edward pried the teeth off and commanded Vert, “Go back the way you came, make sure you pick up those two we downed, I'll take care of the king, it's going to get a bit cramped in here.”

Edward's armour reverted to its white and grey colour scheme, then the back glowed and a larger armour emerged, enveloping all of him except for his arms and shoulders. He then dug his armour's larger hands under the door, grinding it open.

He rushed through the path ahead, finding himself in another room, he could see two Kremlings cowering in the corner, on one wall were a pair of lights on each side of a display screen, on another were worn pictures of two apes, two monkeys and one orangutan. In the center was a large metal throne, Ed walked up to it but before he could approach it, a door on the other side flew open and out charged a large-bellied crocodile-man wearing boxing gloves and a crown. The boxing croc landed a pair of jabs on the head of Ed's armour, following it up with a shove, sending him into the wall and a second shove, denting the wall. Ed caught each fist as he tried to strike his head again.

“We should keep out of this, shouldn't we?” One Kremling said, nervously. The other nodded.

Edward then punched his belly and his nose, he then lifted the rotund royal into the air and slammed him into the ground. He dragged him onto the throne and dismissed his larger armour.

Ed pressed several button on the arms of the throne and heard static echoing through the room.

“This is Edward Orson, I have defeated your boss, King K. Rool. Your island, if you do not know, has recently been re-weaponised. I have changed this so that it will self destruct in three-quarters of an hour. All are advised to flee the facility immediately and aid others in their escape,” he broadcast. He turned to the cowering pair and twitched his head towards the exit, the two looked at it and bolted for the corridor. Ed then climbed to the other arm of the seat and pressed a button marked with an arrow pointing up. The throne then launched into the air into another room with several consoles and blank screens. He poked at a few buttons and the screens turned on, he could see a schematic of the aircraft he was now inside of, and a view of the outside, which was a bare landing pad. He poked at more buttons, causing the room to shake, he saw the landing pad vanish out of screen view and after a few moments he could see the open air. He manoeuvred the aircraft into a landing on the beach.

After several minutes of waiting, he saw Veritas approach him with an obese Kremling on her shoulders.

“Where's the other one?” Ed asked, concerned.

“I poked him in the ribs with my foot and he woke up, he ran out by himself.” Vert explained casually. She dropped her cargo onto the sand with a thud that caused Edward to wince.

The two sat for the next 40 minutes, watching the pour of Kremlings out of the man made island become increasingly sparse.

K. Rool came barrelling out of the aircraft, racing towards Edward until the island suddenly and cacophonously exploded, stopping him in his tracks. The head flew off, landing in the ocean with a crashing splash. The remains of the island began to slowly tilt and sink into the watery abyss.

“Can I suggest that you give in, your royal suckiness?” Edward bargained, patting K. Rool's sides.

K. Rool roared in fury again. Throwing another punch at Edward, he blocked it. In retaliation he stomped the reptilian king's left-hand foot and delivered a flying kick to his jaw, causing a fang to fly out.

“Alright, there's more than enough room on this island for you and the Kongs to live peacefully and if you can't, you'll be dealing with me again, we clear?” Edward rumbled, frustrated. He opened up a portal, stepping through it with Veritas.  
Chapter 2: The Knife Runs Deep

A scruffy, bearded man stood on the edge of a cliff in a vast cavern, dimly-lit by flowing molten rock. From the cliff he could see a mountainous silhouette.

“We are almost ready for deployment,” He said.

A deep booming voice responded, “Clean yourself up, you will be meeting prospective allies after your primary objective. Their names are Ramon Salamander, Ciel Phantomhive, Porky Minch and 'the Black Skull', you will tell them that a Robert Page is a mutual acquaintance.”

“It will be done.”

…...

Edward, Veritas and Lumen boarded a bus. “I'll pay their tickets,” Edward said to the bus' driver. Edward and Vert sat down together with Lumen sitting down on a seat behind them.

“I don't mean any offence Lumen, but you kinda look like you're sleepwalking,” Edward pointed out.

“I like to think of it as keeping my eyes ahead,” he said sternly.

“You should watch your damn feet,” Vert scolded him. Lumen pointed to a sign that read 'No swearing or offensive language'. “The hell? This is Australia, right? Swearing flows easier than water here.”

“I've heard a foreigner describe Australia as being like Canada, I've not spent a meaningful amount of time there but I think I'd add to that and say it's a bit like a cross between there and the American south. I'll admit I haven't been there much either,” Edward commented.

“I think I feel a noose tightening around my tongue,” Vert said, facetiously.

“Oh please, next thing you know you'll be wanting to use swearing like punctuation. At that point you'll get nothing said and done. Learn the difference of tempering yourself,” Lumen said, causing Vert to roll her eyes.

“Oh, fuck off,” she spat. Edward shot her a look, then looked at the driver through the rear-view mirror.

“At least don't be a grease fire,” Edward urged of her.

“Fine,” she conceded with a pout. “I can feel the muzzle being tightened again.”

Edward turned to Lumen, “she does have a point; we can't always watch over you while you watch the future.”

“Fine, between foreseeing this conversation and then living through it, I've grown thoroughly weary of it.”

The bus came to a halt at traffic lights. “Look, young lady, I can deal with you swearing among your friends but if you start abusing other passengers, I really will have to kick you off,” the bus driver said.

“I suppose it's about trying to mitigate hostility, right?” Edward proposed.

“I thought we ended this conversation,” she reminded them.

The bus continued on, heading down a split in the road. Edward leaned his head against the glass and watched as cars rushed by in the other direction.

“Clearly the driver has no siblings, or he'd recognise the particular quirks of conflict between them,” Lumen said.

“I thought we were two sides of the same coin,” she said.

“Let's not confuse the driver with the specifics of our relationship, he seems occupied already,” he remarked.

Edward noticed a sharp drop in traffic coming the opposite way, reduced to a handful of cars moving much faster than he thought they should. This was in stark contrast with the bus and vehicles headed in the same direction, all of which had stopped. Ed sat up and looked out the front of the bus, he saw a veil of darkness and a warm glow down the road. “Aww, shit,” he muttered turning to Vert and Lumen. “Get out, something is **very** wrong here.” He then turned to the driver, “could you let us out sir.”

The trio jumped outside and watched as the bus turned around on the gently grassy incline beside the road. A streak of fire separated the two roads. They rushed over in between the halted traffic to find a car caught in the flames.

“Fire, but no smoke, strange,” Lumen said.

“Could be hellfire... ALIGHT!” Edward shouted, deploying a white suit of insect-like armour. He pointed his index and fifth digits, a glowing blue circle appeared around his left hand and a pair of yellow tendrils slowly extended form his palm. They reached underneath the imperilled vehicle and lifted it off the fire. Lumen leapt onto the bonnet and produced a spear, with which he pried the windshield off. He took the driver out and leapt off it. Edward raised it, still on fire, high in the air. The bonnet exploded into smokey flames, breaking free from Ed's influence and falling back onto the grass.

The three including the rescued turned to see a circle of glowing air surrounding a black void. A bulky humanoid shape, ears pointed, eyes glowing and a half dozen glowing slashes on it's chest, emerged. As it stood into the sunlight they could see the metal texture of its armour and two distinct insignia on it's chest, arranged vertically and both encircled; the higher one consisted of circles and spirals shaped like an hourglass the symbol '∞' emblazoned in the center; the lower one, red in colour, consisted of a circle, off-centre, between two lines. It's armour covered all but the chin, of which was lightly stubbled. Glowing red blood trailed down its chin. It shoved vehicles aside including a truck as it walked, its pace measured and deliberate.

“Turn around, walk back the way you came. For one it'll be easier than anything that'll happen if you keep going ahead,” Edward said, confronting the stranger.

“Word of advice, boy. Someone like me? There's no threat or pain you can deliver that will shake me,” the armoured man pledged.

“Well, you're outnumbered,” Edward said.

“You assume,” the stranger replied.

Edward noticed that the opening the stranger entered through had grown larger.

A large bipedal, slouched creature ambled through. Parts of it were armoured with what looked like thick stone, others had crystalline and bony protrusions, grey flesh could still be seen on it's arms and legs. Three spikes protruded from between it's knuckles.

Next walked through a feminine figure covered in red armour. In one hand she held a round shield, in another she held a hammer consisting of stone covering sides of a glowing cube. As she marched though the skies became covered in dark, thunderous clouds.

The eyes and face of the giant began to glow, twin beams of white heat shot out. Lumen leapt out of the way as the beams burned through the vehicle he stood on. The armoured woman raised her hammer and sent down a strike of lightning, barely missing Veritas as she shot out from under it.

“Our numbers are equal, but your might is lacking,” the armoured man extended three claws from between the knuckles of each fist, all covered in glowing blood. Edward aimed his right hand at him and fired a volley of white bolts at him. The clawed armour emitted a wide beam of red light from its lower insignia and a shield materialised in front of him, which bore Edward's attacks. The shield shrunk and placed itself on its creator's left arm. Drops of blue light flowed out from insignia on the wrists of Edward's armour, forming into Iustitia, a hammer/axe/arm-cannon, and Stormcaster. The two stood off, blood dripping from its drenched claws. Edward, glanced at his exposed and clenched teeth as blood continued to drip from his mouth. His right arm twitched and the two began to exchange swipes with their weapons. Blood spattered onto the surrounding vehicles causing the windows to spontaneously shatter.

The spiked behemoth threw it's fists on the ground in an attempt to smash Lumen. He responded by slicing at it's shins. It doubled over and he took this opportunity to pin a let to the ground with his spear and take several stabs at the side of its torso. It attempted a backhand but found its hand pinned to the ground with the spear. The behemoth let out a roar, Lumen took this opportunity to thrust his sword deep through the roof of its mouth.

Umbra transformed into a much taller form, rocky armour enveloped her arms and legs. She shot like bullet at the armoured woman and collided with her shield with a resounding gonging. Umbra's foe spun and bashed her head with her glowing hammer. Umbra suddenly found her self flying into the side of a van, embedded with a crash. Upon seeing a woman ran out of it, she lifted the now empty vehicle upon her shoulders and hurled it at her. The woman rolled out, letting the projectile land behind her. Dark clouds began to form above them. The hammer holder extended her blunt weapon into the air, a red bolt of lightning shot down from the sky, streaming off the hammer towards Umbra. The attack burned and stung her causing her to convulse and fall to the ground. She felt an agonising burn on the side of her belly.

Lumen ran to offer his sister aid but was knocked onto his front. He turned to see his felled foe climbing to its feet again, it's eyes glowed. 

Edward landed a strike with Stormcaster, taking a piece out of the armoured man's helmet. He could see his eye underneath. He repeatedly tried to swipe at Ed, each strike deflected by his weapons. Ed delivered a surprise heel strike to his helmet and knocked him onto the side of a car. The two struggled as he tried to bring his hammer and axe down onto the clawed armour. The circular insignia glowed briefly, the helmet reformed. The foe regurgitated a fiery fluid onto Edward's helmet, sending him reeling back onto another vehicle. The clawed man took this opportunity to sink his claws deep into the sides of his armour. Edward's knees gave in as a brilliant burning sensation filled his senses, as the armoured adversary leaned in close to him, heavily breathing on him. 

Edward clenched his left hand and a cloudy portal appeared underneath Lumen and Umbra, engulfing them both. It pulled its claws out and let Edward fall onto his knees before slicing his head into four pieces.

A jet slowly emerged from the still-open abyssal portal, along with more people;

One wore a yellow helmet with pointed ears, dressed in ornate robes including a cape. It made a few gestures with its gloved hands and the streak of fire separating the roads vanished.

The next wore scaly gold armour on her arms and legs, her helmet also had pointed ears.

Four chains made of glowing red energy extended out from the armoured man's wrists and into the portal. Attaching themselves to four people emerging from it; one had pale skin, short black hair and fangs protruding from her mouth; another wore a helmet resembling a giant red eyeball; the third looked to be part man and part machine; the last had a feminine figure clad in black with streaks of yellow and red.

The creature's spikes retracted as it shrunk into the form of a musclebound human male.

The hammer-wielding woman leapt atop the jet as the others climbed inside. A cylinder of light engulfed the vehicle, disappearing it.

All who entered through the burning hole had the same lower insignia embedded onto their chest that the armoured man had.

Edward's head reformed out of red mist, as did Umbra and Lumen. As his head hit the asphalt he awoke to find himself on his bed again.

“You're okay, kid,” A deep feminine voice assured him. He turned to face the doorway, in it stood a woman in a red leotard, a hole shaped like lightning exposed the middle of her chest and abdominal muscles. She also wore white gloves, black boots and red lipstick. Her blonde hair was shaped in a bob-cut.

“You got my distress call? I thought I pointed it... elsewhere,” he said.

“I'm a legitimate member of Amalgamated Justice. My division's 'Birdforce', I'm Karan Danvers but if you want a code-name, I go by Ms Power.”

“'Miz'... Power...” he said, unimpressed, he tried to sit up only for his sides to begin stinging, he winced as he fell back onto his bed. “Who the hell were they?”

“My companion 'Greenheart' collected some DNA from the scene. We found some gem-like fluid which I assume is you and we found blood from someone who shouldn't have been there. But I guess he was if your recent scars are anything to go by.”

“Who the hell is 'he'?” Ed asked, impatient.

“The 'Dark Claw'.”

“What would Yortham's vigilante want with me?”

Danvers sat on the seat at Edward's computer and powered it on. Displayed on it was a video on a window. She ran it; it showed the scene of their recent battle, and them seemingly just walking away from Lumen and Umbra.

“By all rights, they should've killed you three, it only makes sense for them to show no quarter if they wanted to send a message to the world,” she said.

“How the hell did you figure out my password? I've made a point of installing **rigorous** security of my own making on it,” Edward asked.

“Greenheart made a gadget that disabled any self-destruct, lockout protocols, et-cetera. I tried about a million passwords a second, didn't even take me that long. You're such a sweetie deep down.”

Edward blushed slightly and turned his face away from her.

“I-I, used the Reality GemStone's power, made it look like Lumen and Umbra had been portalled away. Reality warping is generally dangerous, but I can create vivid and detailed illusions, its the safest way of using that power.”

A woman covered with green, pink and black armour stood in the doorway, her helmet vanished a hexagonal shape at a time until her dark face lay revealed. She was young and short haired.

“This is Greenheart,” Danvers introduced her.

“Yo, nice to meet you. You should give me a look under the hood of your armour sometime,” the armoured girl said.

Edward furrowed his brow and screwed his face up. Lumen swiftly emerged behind her, barging between her and the doorway and standing in front of her.

“Cheeky ain't she?” the blonde woman remarked.

“'Presumptuous' is how I would describe her.” Lumen said no-nonsense.

The blue-haired young man extended a hand towards Edward. He took it and the two lifted him to a sitting position. He then turned and shifted Danvers and the seat she sat on out of his way, kneeling at his computer and ignoring her protest. He opened a black window on his computer and began to type away.

“Deleting your porn?” Greenheart asked teasingly.

“Don't want us to know all your lurid fantasies?” Danvers joined in. Lumen and Edward rolled their eyes.

“I think you two'll be quite disappointed. Anyway, I'm trying to see if I can find that event that teleported them.”

“Oh, good luck,” the blonde superheroine said.

“Yeah, I'm gonna need it, the southern hemisphere is sorely lacking in sensors I can use. I hope they re-emerged in the north. That’s if they teleported anywhere on this planet at all.”

“Why'd they attack you? You're not exactly a soft target.” the younger woman inquired. Edward stopped typing and stared in concentration for a few moments.

“Hmm, I guess there is no butter too hard if you have a hot enough blade.” Edward said, “that burning hole in reality looked familiar. It looked like the one the Grim Reaper opened during that fight in Alucard's castle.”

“Ya fought the Grim Reaper? And he opened a portal to hell?” Greenheart asked incredulously.

“Just a footnote in my career, besides, I didn't beat him that time. I have a lot of enemies in hell, maybe someone there struck a bargain with their warden. Although even he should know not to mess with people outside his little pit of fire.” A thought dawned on Edward, “yeah, that **was** hellfire on and around the road,” he screwed his face up again, “but that wasn't hellfire used on me, otherwise I'd be dead. I'm sure Greenheart's right about the portal to hell idea.”

“Thank you muchly,” she beamed in reply.  
Chapter 3: Connect On High

It was a dark knight at Roosevelt Island. A man clad in black emerged from the rocky shore and crawled to the foot of a lighthouse, his getup resisted the salt water well enough that he left no watery footprints. He avoided sight of armed security, covered in synthetic muscle. He silently crawled up to one guard, he extended his bloody claws and slashed at the back of the guard's head. The guard dropped face-first onto the ground and lay there motionless.

He grappeled to the roof of a building marked Hargreave-Rasch and crawled over to a glass ceiling. Beneath it he could see a richly-decorated room, a few pieces of high-tech armour could be seen in glass cases. He dug his claws through the glass, shattering it and landing him inside. A half-dozen guards pointed their firearms at him.

“I am here for one reason, the Illuminati. Two hours ago I just dispatched one of your biggest enemies. I know Jacob Hargreave is here and I know the names of his fellow collaborators,” the intruder growled.

“All that talking and you didn't have the courtesy of introducing yourself. Between your murder of one of my guards and the vandalism, the debris you still stand in, I am of no inclination to grant your request,” an old man's voice replied.

“It could be worse. Correction: it could still be worse; one of my companions has joined me on this mission, your guards are strong on land and only slightly vulnerable under water, but she is stronger. You have the back luck of having located yourself next to water. We call her ‘The Boiler’, I am the Crimson Commander, and you… you must be Jacob Hargreave.”

“An astute observation. I regret to inform you that I am not privy to the goings-on of the hidden elite. I've had to settle for laying down roots as deep as they'd go, so that no force could remove me. Having the lion's share of transhuman technology locked away has afforded me a certain, shall we say, weight.”

“Your offerings are too primitive to be of any interest to me.”

“Sounds like you have nothing to exchange and so you will find my associates quite elusive. I can relay an offer from them; it seems they want you to reverse a certain setback they experienced some years ago. They'll provide you a flying fortress, blueprints to a gravity generating device and the co-ordinates to a cache of buried mecha, the value of which is considerable albeit below that of my innovations.”

…...

It was a fine, albeit windy, day for a micronation in the middle of the Mediterranean. The islands, named Medici, were crescent shaped with much of its landmass being in the centre of it's land. A volcanic island lay east of that landmass.

An enormous metal aircraft hovered over the volcano, it deployed a large metal disc underneath. As it activated, dust rose form the mountain's caldera. A rumbling panicked the nearby people, intensified by the cracking of the mountain's sides. The metal aircraft moved east. The disc stayed trained on the base of the island. The crackling intensified briefly before the mountain exploded, spewing out dust, rocks and lava. The disc retracted and the aircraft headed northeast. 

It headed towards a run down concrete building resembling a stadium, but paw-shaped. The aircraft laid down in front of the complex's entrance and deployed a ramp, dozens of armoured troops ran out with leads attached to their waists, making a beeline for the door to the complex's interior. Several troops shot steel cables at the twin doors and then at the concrete at either side of the doors. The cables pulled tightly and heaved the entrance open. The mass charged inside, carrying more cable and rappelled down a large elevator shaft. Below, sitting behind panels of reinforced glass lay hundreds of azure and white quadrupedal machines, each had a clawed hand and a disc, the latter much like the one underneath the large aircraft. The troops brandished guns that fired steady laser beams, burning holes in the glass. They switched to handling fire extinguishers, blasting at the glowing outlines in the glass. The troops tied the cables around the mecha and signalled at the aircraft to retract, pulling dozens of the four-legged machines out into the shaft, out the door and into the inside of the aircraft.

Meanwhile, east of the spewing volcano the civilians were hurriedly evacuating the area when some noticed a small flying object come to a halt over the sea between the volcano and the mainland. A gust of frosty air blew out of it and onto the flowing lava, blackening it and slowing it to a halt. Some noticed that the floating figure had a yellow top and wore a red leotard.

“Is that a woman?” One person asked.

The floating woman zoomed toward the crowd and landed at their feet.

“'Ms Power', mind telling me what happened here?” she asked.

“Something that looked like that sky fortress came to a stop above it a little while ago. Next thing we knew the volcano blew its lid and sent magma out towards here,” someone in the crowd said.

“It went over to Insula Lacrima, a cluster of islands few kilometers north of here,” another said.

“All I needed to hear,” Danvers said before she flew off. As she flew over the water, something leapt out and tackled her out of the air and into the salty water.

The two struggled briefly before she felt something sharp penetrate her side. Panicked, she sent out energy on all sides before flying out into the air. She felt something wrap around her feet. She looked down to see a chain had tangled around her. As she continued to ascend her assailant followed her out into the light, attached to the other end of the rope by a prosthetic arm. It was the Boiler, her chain retracted rapidly pulling her toward Ms Power.

“Ms. Power reporting, I need backup,” she transmitted.

Greenheart emerged from a cloudy portal. She saw the active volcano ahead of her and Ms Power struggling with the Boiler high in the air, above the clouds. The green-armoured girl flew up to help. She grabbed the feet of the Boiler and pulled herself up the other woman. The Boiler shoved and lashed out at her with her free arm. Greenheart materialised the barrel of a gun on her arm, aiming it at the Boiler's helmet and opening fire.

“Dammit, you stupid girl, get her chains off my legs!” Danvers scolded her. The chains suddenly loosened, sending the Boiler and Greenheart falling.

Danvers forced herself downwards towards the metal fortress. She crashed onto its deck, leaving a large dent in her wake. A dozen troops opened fire on her, she fired back with a pair of eat beams from her eyes and burned through her attackers. The Crimson Claw landed near her, much more gently than her own impact.

“You're under arrest, Logan,” she announced.

“I'm not 'Logan', I never was. I took that name to remind me of how cruel life can be,” he said.

“You should’ve taken it to heart. Maybe it'll take a beating from me for a lesson to stick with you.”

“Ah, cruelty, a language older than tongues.” Logan deployed his bloody claws and marched towards her. She sent out a beam of energy from her hands in response. A wall of red energy pushed back her attack. She lunged at him only to get a face full of regurgitated fire. She tried to fly upwards only to find a grappeling hook wrapped around her leg. He shot up to her and slashed at her shin, she cried out in pain. She then thrust her other foot into his face before falling back to the ground. Still grappeled to her, he crawled up to her and sunk his claws into her thigh before leaning in close to her ear. As she panted, agonised she heard him calmly say, “Worlds only get moulded in fire, set the blaze or be swallowed by it.”

“Fuck you, I hope you're the one who burns!” she snarled, shaking from her wounds.

Greenheart and the Boiler landed on a runway, the shock of impact triggered a headache in her. Boiler landed on her foot and knee, the trident on her prosthetic hand parted and extended. Riri climbed on her unsteady feet and watched intensely at her fishy foe's fork. She heard a rushing of water behind her, she turned to see a pillar of spiralling water looming over her. It crashed on top of her, sending her off the runway down an incline and into the water. The Boiler marched down the incline after her. Greenheart clawed her way to dry land but found herself pulled back underwater by a tendril made of the sea itself. She found herself hauled deep below the surface as bubbles formed around her and on the sea floor. Her suit sounded an alert for high temperature.

“My red computer core entangles with my psyche, it augments my psychic power and imparts incredible heat into all I influence. Should we meet again I'll melt that shell of yours and crush you in the depths of the ocean.”  
Chapter 4: Through A Mirror Darkly

Edward, Veritas and Lumen watched as a massive bird-shaped aircraft splashed down on the ocean near the stretch of beach they strolled on. A sparkling golden circle opened nearby and several women walked through; Zatana “White Witch” Maximoff, she wore white fishnets, tuxedo top and top hat along with a long white cape, she brandished a black and white wand; Jennifer “She-hunter” Spencer wore a red bodysuit and carried a shotgun, a red cloud flowed through and formed into an equally crimson coloured woman, the Tornado Eye; another woman in a harlequin-like bodysuit stepped through, the eyes of her suit widened and narrowed strangely lifelike, she carried a bat and a straight-edged samurai sword on her back; the last woman wore a metal suit of armour like Greenheart's, several glowing blue lines distinguished this suit from the other.

Edward approached Jennifer and extended his open right hand, “A pleasure to meet you, 'She-hunter', I wish it could've been under better circumstances.”

“Understandable,” Jennifer gripped his hand lightly and shook it, “'Amazon' is still working in Charles' school so the top brass handed me the sheriff's badge.”

“Any word on 'Greenheart'? I really need to know if Medici's authorities found her after I portalled her to help Ms Power,” he asked with some urgency.

“The ship, the 'Sky Fortress' the natives called it, just disappeared after it absconded with the buried mecha. And I regret it took our fearless leader as well,” the armoured woman explained as she exited the aircraft, “I got in a tussle with the fork-shooting woman, she threatened to literally crush me if we fought again, so I negotiated with the locals and got me some suit upgrades.”

Edward furrowed his brows, “Upgrades? You mean their bavarium? They're as tight-fisted with that stuff as Wakataris is with Vibron. Wait, is that you 'Greenheart'?”

“Yes, I survived.” the metal girl sighed. “This bavarium is fascinating, with the right engineering it can tap into Earth's magnetic field for nearly unlimited power.”

“Word is that fortress disappeared like the Crimson Claws and their jet did,” Lumen said.

“Yeah, it's been difficult to pinpoint when they happen, phone footage gets glitchy probably from the EMP the 'event' gives off. It doesn't measure too highly on the Richter-scale, either, especially when you consider a frickin' volcano was going off nearby,” Edward said.

Edward walked off from the group. He sent a message to Greenheart's armour to join her, she hesitated but moved to join him.

“So,” he began, “how far did you twist the Medici government's arms to get their bavarium?”

“Look, they owed me!”

“For what? The fortress got away with a hundred mecha and your old boss, too!”

“If they used that ore properly they'd have knocked it out of the sky.”

Edward mimed tearing his hair out of his head. “The old regime **did** use it, turned it on their own people. Hell, a scientist let herself get blown to kingdom come to burn all that research.”

“Well that bitch was a fool. If we buried everything we used to kill people, we-”

Edward threw a fist into her helmet, “Have some damned respect, I disagree with her decision but she died fighting against a legitimate tyrant!”

Edward noticed Jennifer and Zatana aiming a shotgun and a wand, respectively, at him. The harlequin-like woman teleported next to him and raised a sword to his throat.

“Doncha know not to hit a girl? Total bad guy shit there, ain't you the title character of this fanfic?” she said.

“Didn't realise she was underage... also, I will admit I lost my temper.”

“I'm nineteen, not that hitting a woman is any better,” Greenheart clarified.

“Don't give him excuses darlin', ya just splitting hairs.”

“I've fought plenty of members of the opposite sex, I don't treat them any more lightly, I can't afford that. Look, I apologise for hitting her. I am **sorry**.”

Greenheart lifted off the ground and flew off inland. Lumen stood between Edward and the two women.

“Did you think to ask, **why**? My Driver is not in the habit of just hitting people,” Lumen said.

“I dunno, maybe he's turning into the villain again? Like in all those fanfics that haven't been written yet.”

“Tornado Eye, find Greenheart. Edward, it won't change anything but tell us anyway,” Jennifer ordered.

The red woman flew off after the green woman.

“Medici closed off their bavarium mines. It's as good as buried. Can you order this clown off me, Jen?” Edward asked.

“What? When I asked the Medici representatives on Riri's behalf for some bavarium and their research on it, they were only too willing to provide both.”

“I ain't a clown, I'm a 'Hellequin'! You should know what that is, you got that Italian assassin's memories still, doncha?”

“Bull. Shit. I organised to get Medici all the aid they needed to get back onto their feet and avoid meddling from questionable groups and they still outright refused to hand over any of it,” Edward said.

“Is that the only reason ya helped them? For pretty rocks?” Hellequin lectured him.

“I have a ship, the Ark II, my own society of people safe from the meddling of said questionable groups. I may not be able to save the seven billion people on this planet but I'll be able to keep the millions that the Ark II holds out of their influence.”

“Who?” Jennifer asked. “Who are these 'questionable influences'?”

“HYVEDRA, for one. Russia sent that hybrid, and that... really got out of hand, **fast**. If such groups got their hands on bavarium it'll be a DiRavello regime around the world. I only wish to enlighten them to it's potential, give them wherewithal to preserve their autonomy, to resist oligarchical influences.”

“Let's refocus,” Lumen suggested, “I've looked to the future, it seems that the Sky fortress' next target will be another formerly oppressed micronation; Solis.”

“We'll dispatch the Birdforce there as soon as we find Greenheart. It seems she's activated her cloak.”

“I suggest your group go on ahead, even if you're two short. The stakes are almost certainly as high if they're after what I think they are. The three of us will look for Riri,” Edward said, voice full of dread.

“Don't be vague, tell us what Solis has!” Jennifer demanded of him.

“Artificial weather inducers: tornadoes, sandstorms, violent thunderstorms and blizzards. Now, if you don't mind, we need to help Tornado Eye find Riri.”

Edward created a portal and the three walked through it. The three emerged in the shade next to a car park complex. Edward showed them his right hand, there were many cracks on his knuckles. His armour materialised over the knuckles, concealing the fractures.

“What happened to your hand?” Veritas asked, concerned.

“Looks like he got nerfed, I guess his writer was afraid he came across as a 'Gary Stu', a real problem with puttin' an 'OC' in the middle of a crossover. But I guess Kingdom Hearts pulled avoided that pretty well.”

Edward tried to ignore Hellequin, “Riri's helmet, and the Infinity Gauntlet, more the latter. I used the thing's full power twice, technically thrice. All that energy did a number on my whole arm, it's shaky and brittle now without my armour.” He turned to face Hellequin, “Jeez girl, could you put your damn sword away!” he said to Hellequinn.

Hellequinn looked to Jennifer, who nodded her head. She sheathed her sword and the group headed through a portal.

Meanwhile, Riri sat atop one of the few multi-storey office buildings in Burrah, she sat on its edge watching the marginal activity in the streets. She turned to see a security guard approaching her.

“What the hell?” the guard asked, “Uh, could you please leave this building, I don't think you're authorised to be here.”

“How about you piss the hell off and leave me alone!” Riri turned to face him, she extended an arm and next thing the guard knew, he had been flung backwards and off the roof. She heard a frightened yell from the guard that came to a sudden stop. Tornado Eye hovered up from where he fell.

“Do you realise you almost killed him?” the red girl scolded her.

“L-like I give a damn. He should've left me alone. Where does that Edward get off, hitting me like that!?”

“Him hitting you doesn't excuse you trying to kill someone else, have some sense, have some restraint!”

“How about I do what I want and you piss off!” The armoured woman raged, she pointed her arm at Tornado Eye. An invisible force shoved her backwards. The red woman's body turned cloudy, her gaseous form enveloped Riri and began to spiral wildly. The crimson tempest flung her through a signpost board and onto a parking lot. The red gas flowed over to her, reforming into a human shape. “Oh, you wanna get nasty, do ya? I'll show you what I can do!” Riri warned as she climbed to her feet. She thrust her palm towards a van, causing it to levitate. She moved her arm to face Tornado Eye and sent the vehicle flying into her. It bent it came to a halt, the red woman tore it in half, her skin had a crystalline sheen to it. Riri turned her arm into a battering ram, launching herself at the other woman. Her arm bounced off the other's chest. Tornado Eye retaliated with a chop of her hand, her attack bounced off an azure field of energy that covered Riri's armour.

“I calculate that my vibron-core cells will endure much longer than your bavarium generators. Let us consider this a stalemate.” Tornado Eye offered.

Riri ignored this and proceeded to pummel her torso with a flurry of rapid strikes.

“Give it up,” she heard a familiar man's voice say. She turned to see Edward (fully armoured) and co. heading towards them. “At least keep this BS off the streets!”

Riri lifted another vehicle and tossed it at Edward. The vehicle bounced off his shield and onto a road. He pointed his index and little finger at it, extending a curling tendril of yellow light which lifted it off the road. Lumen chucked his spear at her but she caught it in a gravity well and flung it away. She tried to catch Edward in another as he walked up to her, an orb on his solar plexis glowed as he continued to approach her. Once in arm's reach he generated a portal under him and her, swallowing the both of them.

The two dropped into parklands. Riri attempted to strike Edward again but her blows were met with the white wall of his shield.

“You'll not break through this, not in an aeon!” He warned her, “put your armour away and we'll talk.”

“What? I ain't ever taking this armour off, 'specially not for you!”

“Do you ever leave it? Do you shower in it?”

“What? No! Pervert!” Riri, now outraged, tried to capture him in a gravity well again but to no avail. “Dammit, why isn't the ‘GRIP’ working on you?”

“My suit's equipped with antigravity technology. Usually I just make myself jump high with it, but it seems to work against gravity guns just fine.”

“Goddamn, your suit's teched out with everything! The hell did you get all that!?”

“Luminoth, Uranus, the race, not the planet,” Edward clarified, “Ceph and Reploid too, it's a mishmash.”

“I haven't even heard of half of those, and my computer core has a damned big database. All it's tellin' me that your shield is made out of Uru and gives off traces of neutron radiation.”

“Makes sense, the skeleton of the shield is made out of Uru and is designed to shape an ultra-thin barrier of neutrons.”

“Jeez, genuine neutronium?”

“Yup. Your suit's pretty impressive to me, even outside the bavarium.”

“Uh, thanks. I only made, like, half this stuff. Hard to put an exact number where my stuff starts and the G-three's tech begins. I started out just trying to replicate Hal Stark's technology in my basement, like how some artists start out tracing others' work.”

“'G-three'?”

“Green Galactic Guardians, or space police, if you will.”

Edward retracted his helmet, “Doesn't it get stuffy in there? At least let your head breathe.”

“No! No way!”

“I promise I won't hit you again, I'm sorry I did it the first time and it won't happen again. But please, if you don't know someone, don't talk ill of them”

“It- it's not that,” Riri stammered.

Edward neared her again and opened a portal underneath them. The two dropped into Edward's house, Riri landed and fell off an edge on top of him. Her helmet retracted into her suit and the two stared awkwardly into each other's eyes. She leaned in and forced her tongue into his mouth. He rolled the both of them over.

“Well,” a deep voice interrupted them, “I told the boss this is why I don't do house visits.”

Riri shoved Edward off herself forcefully, he stumbled backwards onto a rug. He turned to see a man covered in synthetic muscle sitting in the lounge room. He took off his mask, a red visor and mouthpeice, revealing a dark complexion.

“'Prophet', some timing you have.”

“You know this pervert?” Riri asked Ed accusingly.

“You watch your mouth, little lady!” the other man shot back.

“What are you here for?” Ed asked him.

“Shady bullshit, cloak and dagger, mostly cloak though,” another less deep but hoarser voice said. Edward turned to see a heavily augmented young man leaning in the hallway.

“Care to introduce me?” Riri asked tersely.

“Muscle man here is, well, I don't know his real name. He's a spook, I mean, a black operative,” he sighed and mentally kicked himself.

“They call me 'Prophet'.”

“I'm Adam Jensen, and you are?”

“Ri-..., no, call me 'Greenheart'.”

“For the girl's sake, I'm a go-between for Jacob Hargreave and his more controversial friends, like Edward here.”

“Twenty-nine year old tongue-wrestling with a teenager, I say that's pretty controversial,” Jensen quipped.

Edward sighed, “What did Jacob want? Does he not know he can contact me by sub-wave?”

“He doesn't trust that technology. About a week ago he had an intruder, cut through Jacob's nanosuit soldiers like butter. He demanded that Jacob arrange for him to meet with other 'persons of interest'.”

“Did he name anyone specifically?” Edward asked.

“Ramon Salamander, Ciel Phantomhive, Porky Minch were a few.”

“Not DeBeers? Interesting,” Edward pondered.

“Who are these people?” Riri asked.

“Powerful, dangerous, and obscure people. I'm sorry, just be hearing these names you may very well now find yourself shunted to the margins, if you're lucky. They run Earth's underworld and they're more powerful than HYVEDRA, assuming said group isn't just a splinter of theirs.” He turned to Prophet, “I know their next move, an attack on Solis.”

“Do you know that, somehow, all those mecha they absconded with have been enhanced with imitation Ceph technology? And that the Illuminati are looking to use the guy who tried to kill you to go after Rico Rodriguez?” Prophet asked.

“Shit, good luck with that.” Edward remarked.

“Who's Rico Rodriguez?” Riri asked.

“A so-called 'Dictator Removal Specialist’, he freed Panau, Medici and Solis each from decades of tyranny. He did not have his agency's approval to liberate those last two, which means he's had to seek refuge in Solis. If that flame-spewing bastard can almost kill me, he can probably do in Rico too.”  
Chapter 5: Solis And The Shadow Of Rodriguez

“Lanza Morales has been called to attend the interrogation of a former peer of his at La Mazmorra prison,” Logan explained to another man. A map of a large island flickered onto a screen in front of the two, it zoomed into a desert area on the west and highlighted a small military installation. The photo portrait of a dark-skinned man with bushy hair covered the right of the screen, labelled as being of Lanza. “Our Black Hand allies will lead an assault on the surface of the facility, this will lure out your real target,” the picture of an athletic Mediterranean man showed up underneath the other portrait, labelled Rico Rodriguez. “The termination of Lanza is optional but our benefactors oblige you to kill Rico.”

“Rico will die, I guarantee it!” the other assured him.

“Dictators and armies have failed to kill him, do not underestimate him.”

“If the Black Hand fail us?”

“No real consequence, I happen to know another means of sowing chaos in Solis. The Boiler will be in position by the time our secondary assault commences.”

The other stood in front of several crates and unbuttoned his jacket, underneath where two symbols, a skull with pointed ears and underneath was the same symbol as was on the lower part of Logan's torso. A red beam dissolved all but one of the crates, he opened the last and placed a large machine gun and a rocket launcher on his back.

Later, he stood beside a high-capacity helicopter along with several Black Hand mercenaries. He barged through them and into the vehicle. As it began to ascend one of the guards turned to him.

“I hear your job is to terminate 'Rodriguez the Rampager', good luck with that. That son-of-a-bitch has probably killed thousands of my mates,” the soldier commented.

“Shut up, Manfred! Only talk to the 'Judicator' if it's mission critical!” another officer spat.

“Tell me what you know about Rodriguez,” the Judicator prompted Manfred.

“Well, unsubstantiated rumour is that he has a fair bit of innocents killed too but people love him too much to hate him for it.”

“Tell me what sort of fight I'm in for!” the Judicator growled.

“Uh, well, rumour has it that he was augmented after his Panau mission, which would explain how he can fall from such heights and shrug off explosions. His grappling hook has a few gimmicks, it's seeminly inexhaustible and can generate ballons, yank two things together (he downs a lot of choppers with that) and they even have boosters attached to them.”

“How about hand-to-hand?”

“Uh, I hear he gives a mean shove, whips people with his wire-thingy.”

“Excellent, he may not be so difficult after all.”

After a short flight, the doors opened showing a fierce battle raging below them. Ceaseless explosions and gunfire filled the cold, dry air.

“Alright, maggots, we're going in for a touch-and-go, make sure our guest gets in that elevator! Then we don't stop fighting until either we die or, and I hate to say this, until Rico shows up!”

The chopper approached a chain link fence, the moment it came under the chopper the Judicator leapt. He landed, rolling onto a wide metal platform and immediately began to fire wildly at a vehicle sitting atop a hill nearby. Flaring shots flew out and into the bonnet of the vehicle, causing it to explode and spew out fire. A Black Hand helicopter touched down briefly, letting out a dozen troops.

“This is Punisher-Two, we're in position to open the lock here,” a voice on the radio reported.

“Punisher-Actual, we're in position,” another said.

An enemy helicopter swooped into the installation. The Judicator whipped out his RPG and blasted it out of the sky.

“Punisher-One here, we're in position.”

“Do it!” the Judicator ordered. The platform began to descend, the battle fading away into the distance as it did. Standing between two footpaths, he spotted a manned machine gun, he yanked the pin of a grenade with his teeth and pelted it at the sentry. A brief flash of a blast tore the bars and machine gun apart. He spat fiery blood form his mouth as his ripped-out teeth were replace with fresh teeth. He held out his hand, a beam from his chestpeice produced a block of explosive which he threw at the panes of glass that blocked his path. Another explosion tore the glass of its hinges and sent them sliding across the floor. A dozen guards ran out and began to fire upon him, he responded by switching back to his machine gun and mowing them down.

He jogged through the vast underground complex, tearing down guard after guard until he recognised one bearded man. He gunned down his armed escorts and walked up to his target, Lanza.

“Hmm, should I waste a bullet on you?” The Judicator asked the old man.

“Who are you? What do you want with me?” Lanza asked, despairingly as he fell to his knees.

“I judge, and sometimes I execute. Sometimes I spit on liars,” he spat on one of the fallen guards, the glowing fluid set the soldier's armour on fire. “So, what'd you do?”

“What did **they** do?” the other man asked as he gestured to the fallen.

“Law of nature; if they try to kill me, I kill them first.”

“But they were freedom fighters! Fighting the Black Hand, fighting oppression!”

“What'd you do for them, the Black Hand?”

“I was forced to make a weather machine! And then I spent twenty years in jail.”

“Grab a radio,” the Judicator asked. Lanza crawled over to a felled soldier and grabbed the radio off his chest.

“W-what do you want with it?”

“Grip it tight.”

Lanza complied. The Judicator spat on his shoe, burning a hole in it. He began to yell out in pain, “Help me!... Anyone!”

“I'm coming!” a spanish-accented man said over the radio.

“R-rico!? Please help me!”

The Judicator smacked his face with the but of his machine gun, knocking the man unconscious. He ran back to the entrance. From across the hall to the elevator he could see his other target descending into the complex, Rico Rodriguez.

“You are going to spend the rest of your life in here, especially if you killed my friend,” Rico promised, calmly but seriously.

“Rico Rodriguez, dictator removal specialist. Tool of the fetid and corrupt deep state and ruiner of nations.”

“That's 'ex-tool of the deep state', and I only ruin dictatorships,” Rico confidently asserted.

“Intel says you worked with triads to overthrow 'Baby' Panay of Panau. If it isn't already, then Panau will be in the grasp of a dictator again soon, disgusting.”

“I was just following orders, I've been much more thorough with Medici and Solis. Maybe call of your Black Hand goons and leave Solis in peace!”

“Not an excuse, Rico. However, your honesty is appreciated, when I kill you, it'll be quick.”

“Such confidence, it's like looking into a mirror. A mirror covered in black tinting.”

The Judicator fired off his machine gun at Rico, who dove out of it's path and grappelled himself to a hanging wall. Rico dropped down, his grapple still attached to the wall, and fired a machine pistol at the other. A bullet tore a hole in the Judicator's ear, he gritted his mouthful of teeth together as his ear began to reform.

“Rico, have you ever tried to kill a man, who won't die?” The Judicator asked as he shot at Rico's cable. Rico tossed his machine pistol aside and pulled out a larger machine gun. A wall of steel unfolded from the sides of his new firearm, guarding him from his enemy's fire as he, himself, opened fire. The implacable man just continued walking against the hail of gunfire until he could shove his foot into the metal wall. Another kick knocked the gun and shield out of Rico's hands. Rico threw a punch at the Judicator's head, knocking loose a few teeth and nothing more. The Judicator clenched his hand, three glowing blades shot out, he swiped at Rico's belly....

The two fighting armies saw two men rise with the elevating platform. One stood on his two feet, he carried the other to a nearby squad of the Black Hand's enemies, Solis' de-facto army. Leaders on both sides called out for the fighting to cease as the Judicator carried Rico to an armoured car.

Chapter 6: The Eagle Lands In Solis

Hours later, under the cover of a cloudy night, Birdforce's flying carrier made its westerly approach to Solis. Jennifer Spencer had assembled her associates next to a landing strip that ran across the back of the eagle-shaped vehicle.

“Alright, ladies and, uhh... I guess we're all ladies here. Anyway, we all will be backing up at least one weather control station in Solis. White Witch will take care of the facility in the south; Hellequin will be stationed in the centre, guarding the blizzard machine; Kokoro will guard the sandstorm machine in the west; and I will guard the thunderstorm facility in the east. Rescue Star will-”

An alarm sounded, interrupting her briefing.

“'Star', what's the situation?” Jennifer transmitted.

“We've picked up three carriers, Eden Sky Fortresses, one's heading straight towards us!” Rescue Star reported.

“Ladies! We scramble now, get in the drop ship!” Jennifer ordered. The five rushed into a bulky jet-like aircraft, it quickly lifted off the carrier. From the cockpit Jennifer could see the Sky Fortress approach. “'Star', any hails? What's it doing?”

“I'm not sure, they're plenty close enough to open comms or fire upon us but they just keep coming. I'll ready the underside turrets just in case.”

“Good call, we'll keep a wide berth, just in case.” Jennifer replied.

“Maybe they wanna ram us. Ya see anyone on deck?” Hellequin asked.

“I'm not sure, and I'm not game enough to fly close enough to see,” Jen replied gingerly.

“Ain't you psychic, witchy?” the clown-girl asked.

“I sense much fear in the people of Solis, and I sense much anger in the Black Hand. Yet they rejoice too, they say Solis’ saviour is dead.”

“Wow, this story's getting' dark, killing off a videogame hero like that, I guess anything's possible in a fanfic,” Hellequinn said.

“What about the Fortress heading for our carrier?” Jennifer refocused her.

“I... I sense nothing. No minds to enter, no emotions from it.”

Jennifer looked at the Fortress as it continued to head for their carrier, she noticed that its elevation was lower than their carrier. She gasped and pressed her headphones tightly to her ears, urgently broadcasting, “Shoot that thing down, now! It's a giant bomb!”

“Are you sure?” Rescue Star asked, nervously.

“Do it!” Jennifer demanded. Birdforce's carrier began to bombard the deck of the approaching ship. It lost two engines in the barrage and its front began to dip. It suddenly exploded, causing both remaining aircraft to lurch. Jennifer swore as she struggled with the controls. They were now upside-down and watching as the green sky began to get closer and closer. She heaved the joystick to the right, rotating the aircraft right-side up as it crashed violently into the ground.

Jennifer pried her helmet off and let out a small groan, “Urrgh, Birdforce, respond!”

“I'm fine, a little woozy but I'll heal, it's kinda my superpower,” Hellequin replied.

“I'm fine,” White Witch tersely reported as she struggled with her safety restraints. “yolped pmar,” she said, pointing her wand at the rear of the jet, causing the ramp to fall open.

Kokoro also struggled with her restraints, she resorted to unsheathing her sword and sawing through them.

“This is 'She-hunter' of Amalgamated Justice, we've crashed down in Abundancia. Our carrier is crashing down as well, we need urgent transport to the weather machines!” Jennifer broadcast.

The other Birdforce members watched as the bird-shaped carrier turned northward as it continued to lose altitude. Pieces of metal fell from the gashes that the explosion left.

“[Ferris, can you hear me?]” the White Witch transmitted telepathically.

“[I can't talk, trying to make sure this falling rustbucket doesn't crash into a city,]” Rescue Star replied.

“'She-hunter', I'll be teleporting myself to the tornado machine in the south,” the White Witch informed her.

“Can't you wait a few minutes?”

“Really? It's bedlam here! I'm not going to wait another **second**.”

The titular witch opened a sparkling yellow circle in the air and stepped through. She stood atop a glass dome which itself stood atop a concrete structure nested inside the crevice of a mountain. Sitting in the centre of the facility was a round opening, of which she was briefed generated the initial spiral of wind. The arrival of dozens of airborne vehicles and drones prematurely ended her surveillance of the facility.

The aerial convoy shot a volley of missiles at her, she redirected them into the mountainside. She pointed her wand at the glass below her, tearing it to shards and sending it flying into the enemy's vehicles. As they fell from the air, they froze in place, as did the rest of the world. The air in front of her burst into flame and a helmeted sorcerer emerged from the embers.

“[My dear child, step aside.]” the sorcerer asked.

“Only once you've reduced it to primordial ether,” the White Witch said as she stood firm.

“[I killed you once, in another reality. You tried to burn my body, then my mind.]”

“Perhaps you deserved it?” she fired at him.

“[You shall burn too.]”

The visage of the sorcerer dissolved and motion returned to the world. The choppers and drones fell to earth, smashing to pieces and catching fire. An alarm sounded as pieces of debris floated from the opening in the centre. She looked through the glass below her and saw the sorcerer standing at a console on top of scaffolding. The gushing of the wind intensified as it turned into a towering and spiralling pillar of wind, sending the fallen aircraft back into the sky. The sorcerer shattered the remaining glass on the dome with a few hand gestures. The two, along with the facility's guard, where flung into the air.

Both magicians used magic to stabilise themselves as they orbited the funnel cloud. Floating red circles inscribed with glyphs appeared around his hands and wrists as he pointed them toward the tornado, the spiral glowed as it turned red and yellow. The enemy sorcerer gathered the flying glass in between his hands, now glowing from exposure the pillar of fire, and sent them flying towards the Witch. She transmuted the makeshift blades into leaves, which curled and turned black. Her eyes and skin stung from the heat the twirling fire gave off.

“[Dispel the tornado. I didn't want to invade your mind but you're leaving me with no options.]”

“[I wish you all the luck with that.]”

She focused intensely on entering his mind. The world around her faded into darkness. She found herself standing in the ring of an inferno burning through a rain-forest. She turned around to find a dilapidated pyramid. From its entrance stood out three men; a Tibetan man with a long straight beard, a bald white man wearing a short goatee. The two were collared, chains extended from them into the hands of a third man with unruly black hair.

“Please, my young sorceress, save us,” the bald man pleaded.

“Charles Xavier?” the White Witch asked.

…...

Jennifer had been walking on the side of the road for a half-hour. She had walked east while her comrades had gone north. A small car pulled up behind her and a bespectacled, dark-haired man got out.

“Hey there, ma'am. You look like you have somewhere you need to be at,” he said.

She sighed, “Yeah, east and a bit north. A place called 'Zona Dos', you know it?”

“Yeah, but it's more than 'a bit north'. It's in Kunka, which is almost the furthest part of the north-east. On-foot you'll be walking for nearly a day.”

“Great, and I guess you're offering to drive me?”

“Well, uh, yeah. I guess I should've lead with that. Get in,” he beckoned.

She shifted her shotgun into her hands as she got inside, placing it between her knees. She looked the bespectacled man in the eyes as she stroked it discreetly. A couple of minutes into the drive, the landscape changed abruptly from grassy plains to rainforest.

“You don't look like a native,” she said.

“Yup, I'm doing a story on the ongoing conflict here. Solis is the Qura-kira of the southern hemisphere; seemingly cursed with permanent conflict.”

“Unlike Q-kay, Solis has only been in this conflict for a few months. Mind you, as long as the Black Hand has someone to pump money into them, they'll keep fighting to get Solis back,” she brooded.

“Do you think that's their endgame with the weather machines?” he asked.

“A fair theory. I can't confirm or deny it, however,” Jen answered tersely.

“It seems like that Rico Rodriguez was hoping lighting would strike twice, uh, metaphorically speaking.”

“What do you mean?”

“Guy goes from one bent country to another, Solis to Medici. The latter's now a free country now that DiRavello's militia are either dead or impri-”

“Let me correct you on Medici, all was well and good when Rico was young. It was only when DiRavello carried out his coup that things went south.”

“I just mean, Rico sowed the seeds of chaos and now the crop has spread like weeds.”

“At least they're free now,” Jennifer retorted.

“Now let me correct you, the grip of chaos is no gentler than the grip of order. Their situation has changed but not improved.”

The two arrived at a facility that straddled a river. In the river were over a half-dozen Black Hand boats exchanging gunfire with the soldiers in the facility. Jennifer rushed out to join the fight, blasting away at the boats with her shotgun.

“Thank god you're here,” one soldier ally of hers shouted, “they stormed the port north of us, took it over in minutes. It's why we couldn't bring you here. They'll take Zona Dos if we don't get significant backup and soon!”

“I'm sorry but our bird has crashed in the west. Amalgamated Justice won't be able to help you.”

“We're up against the fucking wall here. If one of those sky fortresses drops down here we'll lose the thunderstorm machine for sure!”

“Then turn it on and issue an order for all units to take cover!” Jennifer yelled, adding “That lightning won't bother me. If it hits, I'll just get stronger!”

The officer withdrew as he grabbed his radio, “Backup's here, it's the 'She-hunter'. She's asking that we bring on the thunder!”

The clear skies quickly filled with dark clouds, the humid air filled with falling drops of water. Accompanying the rain were plentiful streaks of lightning, tearing apart all they struck. Jennifer's eyes were drawn to someone climbing a nearby radio tower at great speed. She aimed carefully at the man on the tower and fired a shot at him, knocking a pair of glasses of his head. The man sat at the top for a few moments when a bolt of lighting struck him and knocked him off. Before she could react she could feel the hairs on her body stand up on end. A flash and a crash knocked her onto her back and tore a gash in her shotgun. Her body began to grow, her muscles expanded, pushing through slits in her outfit. Her feet burst through the shoes in her outfit, her skin turned grey, with streaks of green and blue highlighting her veins. She hopped back onto her feet and took the tie out of her ponytail, she shook her head as she let her hair down.

A hulking spiked figure emerged from behind a concrete structure. It looked identical to one of Edward's would-be assailants. It leapt pinned her to the ground. Spikes burst forth from between the knuckles on his right hand, penetrating her left shoulder. Beams of heat shot forth from his eyes, laying waste to the facility on the other side of the river. The spiked monster then tossed her into the river.

She scrambled onto a boat that somehow hadn't been hit by the barrage of bolts. It was a small vessel, one Black Hand soldier driving the vehicle and one manning a machine gun. She whipped out a large and be-sodden pistol and pointed it at the driver.

“Buddy, you're not making it out of here without me, now go!” she ordered him.

The boat jetted off, winding through swampy river, under bridges and out past a delta. The boat escaped the artificial storm and continued to head out into the sea toward an island in the north-east.

“Alright, we're out, you can stop now. I assure you this is loaded and will ruin your day in one shot.”

“Look lady,” the officer began, “we both got screwed over by those freaks. I know they got one of their friends on that island in front of us. One call and our mates at the nearby military port will come out and join us, either they can kick your arse or we can storm the island together. How does either sound?”

“Well, little man, if you can gather more than nine friends, I'll join you on your airing of grievances.”

“Sounds like a deal,” he pulled his radio close to his face, “alright, Operation Vulcan's Stash is a wash, meet us at 'Isla De Los Annilos'.”

“An island hideaway huh? Neat but kinda redundant, why don't they just hide on the Sky Fortresses?”

“Dunno, don't give a damn. My guys are going to take a fleet of choppers out and bomb the shit out of claw-man's friends there.”

Joining them were several boats and helicopters. Shortly later, the small fleet had moored itself on a beach on the south-west of 'Isla De Los Annilos'. One large boat dropped its ramp, releasing a pair of armoured cars. The footsoldiers filed in. Jennifer tore the machine gun off the boat she arrived on, from the corner of her eye she noticed the officers taking small steps nervously away from her.

The convoy rushed along the curved road into the centre of the island.

Structures consisting of stone concentric circles covered the middle of the island, each had four arches apiece spaced equidistantly. At the structures' centre stood a circular pyramid and atop stairs at the other end was a grotto. The on-foot officers left their vehicles and climbed the stairway halfway, they stopped when an armoured man stepped out of the grotto. The Black Hand officers scrambled for their firearms, pointing them at him but stopping when he raised an open hand.

“I had anticipated this,” the armoured one said, coolly.

“Then what's your escape plan?” Jennifer asked.

“You assume I'll be the one fleeing. Look behind you, notice something?”

Jennifer glanced back briefly before turning her gaze back on him, “Yes, it's a marvel of ancient engineering, but it won't save you.”

A rumbling behind her turned her attention to the circular structures. She and the officers saw as the arch structures in the outermost circle lined up with the staircase and the other arches. The ground beneath them shook more violently....

Hellequin glanced at the violent thunderstorm to her east before staring at the aflame tornado twirling to the south of her, it was a stark contrast to her surroundings. She stood atop the highest structure of a fortress built into a snowy mountain.

“We should just cancel out that tornado with our blizzard machine, Sargento,” she suggested.

“Something tells me that's a bad idea, like chucking ice into a campfire. Also, we can't afford to have the nucleus of our blizzard machine in play, it could be what our enemy is after,” a voice on her radio advised. He added, “also, you're in no position to weather a blizzard, or the other effects the machine here does.”

“Don't worry about me, I'm already freezing my tits off here!” she said. She could hear a sigh on the other end of the line.

A blast of heat behind her caused her confusion and relief. She turned to see a glowing circle around a black void. From the blackness emerged a pale faced man, his muscular chest covered in yellow and his back covered in green fur.

“J-jacky?” she called out. The beastly man lunged at her, his clawed fingers curled. She took out her bat, which he sunk his fingers into. He attempted to sink his metallic teeth into her, his bite stopped an inch from her face. “Aww, puke! Who have you been eating?” She pulled backwards and dug her feet into his belly as he fell forward, sending him tumbling behind her. She leapt to her feet and smacked his head several times with her bat before it splintered. He dug his fingers into her ribcage and lifted her high into the air. He continued to charge forward, sending them both falling off the building.

The two fell atop a giant exhaust fan hat blasted more relieving hot air skyward. She shoved a short shotgun into the roof of “Jacky's” mouth. He took a claw out her ribs and slashed the mask off her face, revealing her tumour-addled flesh to the frigid air. “You he-bitch,” she shreiked as she staggered backward. She fired the shotgun into his rib-cage, the shot knocked him backwards briefly before he charged at her again. She quickly pumped the shotgun and shoved it back into his mouth. She pulled the trigger. The blast devastated his jaw, sending pieces of his cheeks flying and exposing his face full of metal teeth. His face now bore what looked like a bloody, maniacal grin. He regurgitated the deformed slug and glared at her. She fired another shot into his belly, sending him staggering back but still on his feet. She leapt into the air, her jump amplified but the updraft, before she plummeted into the snow far below. Her body, while somewhat numb, could not ignore the agony of dozens of breaks in her bones.

“I'm sorry, Sargento. I got into a fight and now I've fallen below the facility.”

Another fell near her, he rose from the snow. The green fur was a dead giveaway as to their identity. She used her relatively intact arm to straighten the bends in its broken counterpart. She could feel the muscle and bone repair itself in real-time. She could see the bruises and cuts shrink and vanish. The ground beneath them started to shake violently, enough to bury the two in an avalanche.

“What's happening, Sargento? I can't see shit 'cuz I got snow in my eyes. Don't tell me someone turned on an earthquake machine!”

“Negative, we don't have such a thing. We'll try to bring a team down to you soon, once the shaking stops.”

She felt someone grab her shoulder and pull her back onto the surface, it belonged to a familiar white and grey suit of armour.

“Eddie the girl-basher?”

“I will drop you back into the snow, bitch,” Edward Orson replied.  
Chapter 7: Demons Of Solis

Jennifer and the Black Hand fired wildly into the skies, which had filled with a blue and purple mist, along with fat insectoid creatures. Gigantic, glowing plants had enveloped the ancient structures. Jennifer sprinted through the alien jungle carrying one of the officers strapped to her back. The two blasted their way through the horde as it spat globs of acid at them. The pair emerged from the mist to find that it had formed an atmospheric bubble around the centre of the island. Jennifer raced toward a moored boat, shoving it off the sand and swivelling it to face the ocean. She placed the officer onto the boat, turned on the engine and sat in the drivers seat.

As she looked out into the mainland she could see a dozen more blue and purple bubbles had formed.

“Shit, looks like there's no reprieve from those giant bugs,” Jennifer bemoaned.

“Makes you wonder why he bothered with us if he had an army like this,” the officer commented.

“How'd you get into bed with him anyway?” Jennifer asked.

“Beats me, someone dropped a shitton of money into our accounts and told us to work with these freaks to get our home back. It was a Don Corleone sorta offer.”

“You know that refers to extortion, right? Not an offer that's just too sweet,” The She-hunter reminded her.

“That's pretty much all our jobs, even the top brass doesn't know where they come from.”

“Jeez, you assholes deserved to lose Solis.”

….

Edward sent down a bolt of lighting onto the green-furred beast man and sent him flying with a punt from Stormcaster. He then pointed the hammer at Hellequin, several drops of ethereal energy floated out and enveloped her, repairing her body in an instant.

“Did you fall all the way from the air-strip?” Edward asked her.

“Yeah, once upon a time ol' Jackie gave me some of his blood to cure my cancer. Instead of curing my cancer it ended up spreading it all over my body, but now I can heal from anything. Also, now I know I'm in some guy's z-grade fanfic.”

“'Jackie'? You mean Creed O'Quinn? Isn't that the guy I knocked into the next timezone?” Ed asked.

“I don't think he recognised me. He just looked at me like a starving dog looking at meat.”

“Well, you're quite a meal...” Edward said, thoughtlessly, “uh, sorry. I better go now,” he said as he noticed a helicopter making its descent near them. He dematerialised Stormcaster into ethereal drops which flowed into his hand.

He clenched his right hand, his body became cloaked in dark blue. The cloak opened up into two pairs of wings which lifted him off the ground, he headed north-east to one of the bubbles.

He penetrated a bubble; within he saw the Black Hand valiantly fighting against the creatures within, some of the soldiers dangled from the mouths of the flying insects firing upon their comrades. A helicopter entered the dome with him but crashed immediately, its chassis having caught fire. Some of the armoured vehicles had been hoisted by giant tentacles and also fired upon their former Black Hand owners. In the middle of the chaos sat a mass of tentacles.

Edward scanned the mass in the middle, discovering that it had an intrinsic link to the bizarre plants within the dome of purple and blue gas. The scans indicated that anything that glowed a warm orange had the least durability and highest sensitivity of the whole super-organism. Edward leapt towards a group of plants that resembled bunches of glowing orange grapes. He raised his right arm at them and sent a blast of frigid gas at them, covering them in thick frost. Unable to hold their own weight from the sheer cold, the pants collapsed and shattered.

“Shit, man, did god send you?” one black hand officer asked.

“Doubt it, but maybe the devil sent those things,” Edward sarcastically proposed. “You see those little glowy thingies on that thingy over there?” Edward asked, pointing to a mushroom atop a mushroom-like rock. It was indeed covered in small glowing bulbs.

“Yeah, what about them?”

“Bomb 'em, shoot 'em, whatever. Just destroy them all,” he ordered.

Edward floated over to a tentacle that had ensnared a tank. He pointed the index and little finger on his left hand, a winding yellow streak emerged from his hand and enveloped the tank. He tore it out of the tentacles grasp and tossed it toward a trio of troops.

He noticed more mushroom-like plants, the underside of their tops glowed orange. He shot more frigid air at them, freezing them and causing them to collapse on themselves. The trio of troops had manned the tank and used its cannon to fire upon the glowing bulbs. The mass of tentacles in the centre writhed and withdrew into the ground. They exposed a gigantic bud that consisted of three chitinous petals.

Edward clenched his left hand, the purple tear shifted underneath the eye. He summoned Stormcaster again and charged it with purple energy, similarly purple lightning dropped down and struck the giant bud setting it aflame along with the rest of the foreign plant-life. The area filled with blinding light. As the light subsided he saw no sign of the foreign life or the dome they generated, aside from the ruin of their wake.

He vanished Stormcaster again as several Black Hand vehicles rushed into the area. To his displeasure, many of the officers pointed their guns at him and started shouting orders.

“Hands behind your head,” one yelled. Edward seemed to comply, he raised his hands slowly. A couple of curved blades shot out from his belt into his hands. He dashed through a crowd of the officers and eviscerated them, blasting more ice into the air which unsteadied the hovering helicopters.

He flew between mountains covered in concrete and natural. In the distance he detected the source of the invasive plant and animal life in an island north-east of Solis' mainland, he also detected traces of unusual radiation heading south, away from that island. As he approached the unusual radiation he saw its source, a grey-skinned amazonian woman on a boat with a Black Hand soldier. He swooped in and landed between the two, he shoved a foot into their ribcage. He turned to the grey woman and scanned her face, he also noticed a gash under her shoulder.

“Hmm, your facial proportions are a bit off but you look mostly like Jennifer, and she's a known shapeshifter of a sort,” Edward said.

“Yeah, I'm Jennifer. This...” she motioned to herself, “-is what happens when I get stressed.”

“Lemmie guess, **this** Jennifer is a friend of the Black Hand is she?”

“No, jackass! We've both been made aware of the Crimson Claws lack of scruples. Those bubbles? Their leader unleashed the things under those... things.”

“I know a guy who might be able to explain what the hell those demons are.” the officer said as they removed their helmet. She revealed a caramel complexion, slick blonde hair and narrow-glare in her eyes. Her nose and forehead both bore scars.

“You're pretty and I appreciate your offer, but I'm still gonna toss you out of this boat,” Edward said, nonplussed.

“You moron!” Jennifer said, slapping the back of his head, “she's Gabriela Morales; the leader of the Black Hand!”

“'Was', I'm trying to leverage a deal between the Black Hand and Solis' current administration.”

Edward begrudgingly shifted his foot off her, “alright, who's your source?”

…...

Riri hovered high above a cloud of orange sand. She took a moment to gather her courage and dove inside. She landed at the end of a railway line. She attempted to scan the area but found her sensors frustrated.

“Riri Cruz, genius, plaigarist, she who licks the white boots of colonisers,” a deep voice echoed through her helmet. Riri raised both her hands to shoulder height and in front of herself.

“Bitch! It's one thing to shit-talk me, and believe you me, I'm pissed as hell at that, but where do you get off calling Hal Stark a coloniser?” Riri went off.

“The man's claims to glory are nonexistent, stolen. It's only appropriate they get stolen again. Your mind, brilliant as it could be, has been poisoned by this notion that you must imitate him.”

“How about you show yourself. Stop hiding in the dark like a pussy!”

“I think you'll find I'm more cat than you bargained for,” she heard someone say behind her. She turned to see a black-clad man with glowing red stripes and eyes. Emblazoned on his chest was the Red Lanterns' insignia.

“Had a pale-ass teacher when I was young, told her I wanted to do science one day, she just patted me on the head and said 'that's nice'. Told her I wanted to be Hal Stark, old cow laughed at me.”

“You should be ashamed, girl. To aspire to be like someone so low.”

“Well you can go to hell.”

“I've already been there.”

Three bronze blades extended out from between his knuckles. Riri lifted and pointed an arm at him, a metal rod slid over her fist, two dozen smaller prongs protruded from it leading it to resemble an antenna. The armoured cat-man bolted off to the side and vanished into the thick dust. As she flew off in pursuit she spotted a fuel depot and several red drums. She pointed the palm of her other hand, the drums lifted into the air and floated over in front of her. She moved her open hand and the drums followed in front of it, she then sent them flying out in front of her. They vanished into the dust and exploded, she could see several flashes amongst the haze. With her other weapon she sent down a streak of lighting into the unknown. She drew in many pieces of debris with her open hand but failed to pick up the cat man.

“Y'know, Hal Stark was a lot of things, but at least he wasn't a damn pussy!” Riri called out.

She generated another antenna-like structure on her other arm and began to bring down streaks of lightning everywhere around her. Something tackled her out of the air too suddenly for her to react. She flailed her arms and hit the helmet of what was another metal human. The other's helmet retracted, revealing an olive-skinned and red-haired woman.

“Shit, Ginny Ferris?” Riri asked, astonished.

“Riri, was that you?” she asked.

“Was what me?”

“The lightning bolts.”

“Yeah,” she said casually.

“Dammit, you've left several people in critical condition!”

“What? There's no-one here, right?”

“Wrong! Several Black Hand jets flew over the facility and dropped some bavarium. We took cover and fired up the sandstorm machine to frustrate more attempts to bomb us.”

“I was just trying to hit someone who had the same logo on their chest as the guys who attacked Edward the other day.”

The airborne sand thinned out, allowing the daylight to illuminate the whole facility. She could see dozens of people lying wounded on the ground. In addition, several small fires had broken out all over the place. Riri could begin to feel herself growing ill. The other woman place her hands on Riri's shoulders but the younger woman shoved her off and launched herself into the air.

…...

Edward, Gabriela and the grey-skinned Jennifer stood in the office of her contact; a man named Simon Valencia, he wore round glasses, had a narrow jaw with a cleft chin. He was nonplussed at the presence of a man in a strange white and grey outift, who examined the picture of a large round stone head he had on a table nearby. His attitude betrayed no humility.

“I know all there is about the site in Annilos. It's a temple honouring their gods,” he professed. Gabriela rolled her eyes.

“You sure it didn't serve another purpose? What'd the rings and arches represent?” Jennifer probed.

“The Sun! The heavens!” he answered.

“Bullshit, Simon. They were seals! You may push the idea that Otrongo's dynasty were little more than cavemen, but we both know they were cutting-edge engineers!” Gabriel spat as she pointed a pistol at him.

“Hey, you didn't complain while you were running the place. Now you've been booted out you wanna take it out on me? I was your best guy!” Simon said.

“Wrong! You threw the best under the bus,” Gabriel said as Edward moved himself between the two.

“And who was driving that bus, who slammed their foot on the accelerator? You,” Simon fired back.

“You're both horrible, but you, Gabriel, are not going to wash your hands of it in his brains, understood?” Edward said, “This man you threw under the bus, it's only a metaphor and he's still alive, right?”

“Who cares?” Gabriel asked rhetorically.

“I care!” Jennifer yelled, pulling out her pistol and pointing it at Gabriel's head.

“Ugh, surrounded by goody-two-shoes. Fine, his name is Javi Huerta, now can I kill him?”

Edward ripped Gabriela's gun fingers. He and Jennifer forcibly removed her from the premises. As they stood outside they saw a massive white cloud had engulfed the centre of Solis. To it's south, their west, they could see a Sky Fortress floating over to their location. 

“This is codename 'Prometheus', I need an urgent order delivered to Aguaclara; A giant stone head,” Edward broadcast.

Several helicopters, accompanied by a swarm of drones flew out from the fortress. Edward materialised a blue, white, and yellow blade and rotated its handle, wielding it like a gun. Jennifer took out a formerly mounted machine gun from the boot of vehicle they commandeered to get to the town. Edward noticed a building under construction. He called to Jennifer and told Gabriela to evacuate the town, promising to give those loyal to her clemency if she returned with them. The two then ran up the site and took cover as the drones began to open fire. Edward fired globes of white and blue energy from his weapon, with Jennifer firing careful bursts the two tore through dozens of drones every second.

“Do we need this cover?” Jennifer asked.

“One of those choppers has Black Hand troops on it, as much as I want to shred them to ribbons, I have something worse but much less bloody I want to put them through. You're free to leave cover when you wish.”

Jennifer took this opportunity to leap out, landing on the side of an attack helicopter. From this point she continued to tear through drones. Edward shifted the red tear to under the gem on his left hand and rushed down some stairs as another chopper, loaded with troops, hovered above his cover. Several troops lowered themselves down by rope and followed him down. They found themselves in a mostly-white room, many thin black lines etched out shapes in the mostly-vacant room causing it to resemble a pencilled sketch.

“You think you can... 'Take On Me'?” Edward asked as he emerged from a staircase behind him. The troops opened fire on him and perforated him. He turned into red dust and vanished into the air. Their radios started playing the 80's song he named. The troops charged down the stairway he climbed up from and met with several copies of Edward. They raised their firearms at the duplicates but refrained from firing. One copy pulled out a firearm of his own, covered with black and white spots and fired a shot at one of the troops, to the squad's astonishment the target had turned into a cow, still standing on two legs and still somehow holding a rifle. The troops fired upon the duplicate with the gun, who also turned into red dust. This cloud, however, reformed into another bipedal cow. “Aww, were you not a-moo-zd?” another of him said, jokingly. They opened fire again on ALL the duplicates, they all turned into red mist and flowed down the staircase. They pursued, only to be distracted when another collapsed, their body divided like marbles some of which rolled down the staircase. One troop chased the marbles down only to trip, as they impacted a lower stair they shattered like a pane of glass. The shards of the one officer and the marble fragments slid down to the next floor, the bottom and reformed into the two troops. The rest followed them down and found themselves standing in a fully decorated and large bedroom. One walked up to a tall mirror, checking behind it for their tormentor, as he looked at his reflection it walked out of the mirror, causing the original to stagger backwards and fall onto the ground. The rest opened fire on the duplicate, reducing them to a bloody, perforated mess on the floor. The red fluid continued to flow out of his body until it had covered the entire floor and continued to rise rapidly until it lapped at their knees. One spotted a door on the other end and rushed for it. The crew crashed through the door and onto the street.

They turned to discover that they'd emerged, somehow, from a solid concrete wall. They looked to see that Jennifer still had a grip on an attack helicopter as it spun out into the ground.

“Isn't there one extra?” One officer asked. They all started pointing their guns at each other and shouting for them to remove their helmets. Their helmets then dissolved into smoke, revealing that each had Edward Orson's face. “There's only one way y'all walk away alive,” one Edward started, “and that's for all of you to put your guns down and surrender,” another finished.

A green, yellow, and magenta helicopter with a large round stone head emerged and dropped its cargo onto the street. The bipedal cow changed back to normal. One troop changed into Edward Orson. Stormcaster materialised in his left hand as he walked up to the stone sculpture. The tormented troop then found themselves swarmed by other Black Hand yelling at them to drop their weapons and lie flat on the ground.

He cast a yellow energy on the stone and tapped it lightly with the hammer. He dispelled the glow and sent the stone rolling southwards and out of the city blocks. As it cleared the city he cast the yellow energy on it again, stopping it in its tracks. He turned west to face the sky fortress and then struck the stone head several times.

“Fire in the hole!” Edward broadcast as he dispelled the glow. The stone flew off, roaring as it broke the sound barrier and crashed through the fortress. The fortress dipped and fell, it landed with a thunderous crash into a nearby beach.

“What the hell was that about?” Gabriel transmitted to Edward.

“'Stasis', it's a runic ability of mine; freezes something in time and then I can whack it a few times, all that force gets unleashed at once. Now are we ready to go on the offensive?” Edward said.

“Bring it! Gabriela's guns can lay siege while Edward and I can dig in and make Rico Rodriguez proud!” Jennifer said, riled up.

Edward clenched his right hand, a dark blue cloak and hood materialised over him along with Iustitia; his axe/arm cannon. Jennifer hauled a variety of weapons onto her back and belt and joined Edward on the back of a jeep. They, along with a convoy of Gabriel's men, rushed towards the downed fortress.

Once they arrived at the foot of the fallen fortress. Jennifer and Edward gripped the landing skids of a helicopter, which lifted them up onto the front of the fallen aircraft's front deck.

“Nice outfit, very Jedi,” Jennifer remarked.

“Thanks, it's comes from alien DNA. Specifically, a species called the Necrofriggians,” Edward replied.

The front-most part of the deck split into two prongs, like a wrench. On this second level , behind a few metal shipping containers stood another bridge. They each landed on one prong in amongst the exchange of gunfire between Gabriel's soldiers and more drones that lifted off the ship. To the far left was a staircase that lead to a higher level, Edward noticed an opening on the level he stood on that lead to a gigantic aperture on the ground. Jennifer mowed down a handful of soldiers on their level before leaping to the higher one. Edward rushed over to the aperture while Jennifer's sustained gunfire forced several more gunmen to take refuge behind shipping containers. Edward leapt up to the other side of the containers and thrust his hammer into a container, sending it sliding into the soldiers and knocking them down. The container missed one soldier that staggered backwards as the metal box missed them. Edward fired a narrow light-blue beam at him, freezing his torso.

The two spotted several four-legged machines, each leg ending in a mechanum wheel, on the centre of the fortress' deck. Each had a disc on their left arm and either a gatling gun or an autocannon on their right. Some had a cockpit resembling a jet's while others were boxy and heavily armoured. Standing tall on the centre they could see a tall building with a few radio towers atop it. The two then heard a roaring from above; rocket had been launched and flew down from the tower, impacting near Jennifer's feet and knocking her down.

“Are you alright?” Edward asked Jennifer, extending Stormcaster. She grabbed it and the two pulled her back to her feet.

“I'm fine, we have a rocket sniper. Can you give me a boost?” she replied.

Edward withdrew part of his cloak, exposing his left arm. He deployed his shield and knelt down, holding the shield tilted back to him. Jennifer ran full-pelt at him, as she landed and pushed into him. He shifted his shield over him and pushed back against Jennifer, launching her high into the air and atop the fortress' tower. Edward turned his attention to a mecha that, having failed to duck under the bridge, had begun to climb the bridge separating the centre from the front decks. Edward dashed under the bridge and began to shoot more beams of ice at another mecha. The shots froze it's lower limbs on impact, allowing him to throw his hammer at them and shatter their legs.

Jenifer landed atop the tower. She saw a lone man dressed in black and heavily armed standing with her. She could see a white skull with pointed ears emblazoned on his chest. He raised his empty hands and placed them on his head as he walked towards her.

“You're smart, I think I like you,” Jennifer said, teasingly.

“I don't start nothin' and there won't be nothin', right?” he said.

“You did shoot a rocket at me.”

“Got your attention, didn't it?”

“Touché,” the grey woman replied.

“I have some bad news for you...”

Meanwhile, Edward continued to cut a swathe through the quadruped mecha. Weathering gunfire with his shield, lifting one with an updraft generated from his hammer. A roaring noise, high in the sky caused the ground to shake, stunning the tanks' pilots. A bright and vast beam of energy tore a glowing hole in the downed fortress and in it's wake it sent out a wave of superheated air, the wave knocked Edward off his feet. Up in the sky he saw what looked like a second sun growing larger and larger until he could make out a feminine figure in red...

Meanwhile, a man in bulky black armour crashed through the roof of Simon's office. With one heave it sent his desk flying across the room into a wall before it grabbed his neck. It extended a metal claw and cut a vertical hole in his solar plexus, as Simon cried out in agony it then reached for a red core like the one on its chest and implanted it in the wound. It took off with Simon in its grasp...

More armour covered her body than last time he saw her but Edward still recognised her as Karan 'Ms Power' Danvers. A helmet with a burning mohawk covered her face but Edward could still tell that her muscular figure belonged to her.

A Red Lantern core had been implanted in her chest.

The Fortress' tower began to lean to the side as the gaping and burning hole Danvers punched in it melted its foundations, this caused Jennifer and the rocket-launching man in black to fall off the side.

“The Bavarium reactor is going to blow soon, Solis might not want to be thrown back into the stone ages,” Ms Power warned.

Edward hastily froze the ground around him and smashed his hammer through it. Jennifer and the man slid down the side of the fortress, he sunk a claw into the slope and grabbed her hand with his other arm. Danvers flew down and grabbed the two by their necks.

“'Judicator', the Commander no longer has any need for your disservices,” she said as she tightened her grip on his neck. She turned to Jennifer, “As for you, you violated your oath of loyalty towards Amalgamated Justice when you decided to work with the Black Hand. So our fellow agents don't get the idea to turn coat as well, I'm going to have to terminate you as both an agent and as a living being.” She began to squeeze so tight that Jennifer's neck snapped in her hand, she then tossed her onto the ground far below them. She used her now freed hand to burn a hole in his armour, she then reached in to tear out the Red core from the Judicator's chest and much of his beating heart with it.

She then turned her attention to the Black Hand's forces. Beams of burning energy shot out from here eyes in amongst the mass of troops, engulfing them in fiery, violent explosions.

Edward hastily sprayed as much of the glowing blue pit of a reactor as he could, covering it thick with frost. He then felt the ground beneath him lurch and rattle. The rattling lasted a minute before the whole area fell eerily silent. The ice broke apart and began to turn into steam, he noticed that everything, including he himself, began floating in mid-air. Edward floated back to the deck of the Fortress, to his amazement he saw that the fortress no longer sat on land but floated in the vacuum of space far above South America. He could see what he assumed to be Ms Power's glowing form flying back down to Earth. He then found himself suddenly blinded by a bright flash....  
Chapter 9: The Return Of Rico Rodriguez

Edward awoke to see a familiar dark-skinned woman in hi-tech armour standing over him. He looked around to see that he lay in a sterile white room. His armour was still concealed in the dark blue cloak.

“Looks like no-one stuck an IV drip in me, pretty wise of them,” he muttered.

“No-one could stick a needle in your armour after I fished you out of the sea,” Riri commented.

“Where's Jennifer?” Edward asked. Riri avoided his eyes.

Half an hour later, she took him to the hospital's morgue. Lying on one slab was the motionless body of Jennifer. Her neck had been blackened, on another lay the one they only knew as 'the Judicator', his chest agape.

Edward looked away from the bodies and clenched his fist tightly, “Goddammit, that bitch Danvers must've done this!”

“Ms Power?” Riri asked incredulously, “I know you two don't get along but-”

“I **saw** her, she blew a hole in the Fortress without a care in the world, made me freeze the reactor it as she murdered those two.”

Riri stormed out of the room. Edward attempted to follow her but had been stopped by a doctor, who told him that another patient wished to see him.

Minutes later, he stood in a similar looking sterile room as he had awakened. Lying on a bed he saw a familiar Spaniard.

“The smug Rico Rodriguez. Rico Rodriguez the smug. Smug man Rodriguez. Have I mentioned you're smug?” Edward said.

“I believe you have,” Rico said, smugly.

“How the hell are you?”

“Nursing my botched cesarean section. I hear the man who operated on me has had his license revoked.”

“Well, he's dead but same difference, right?”

Rico laughed, Edward cracked a smile. Rico then moaned as his belly hurt.

“Seriously, though. I understand we've failed to defend the four weather machines. I almost wish the Agency had them now. I need to do **something**,” Rico bemoaned.

Edward clenched his left fist, the light-blue tear assumed position under the 'eye' on the back of his hand and glowing blue lines stretched from it to his head. He then snapped his fingers.

“Doctors, Doctors! Prep this man for surgery!” Edward ordered.

Later and still armoured, he sat in an operating theatre with a sedated Rico. The Judicator's body lay on one side of him while Jennifer's lay on the opposite side. Edward cut into Jennifer's belly below her navel and extracted her adrenal gland. He then removed one of Rico's respective glands and replaced it with hers, he stuck the two together with a thin layer of frosted nanomachines. Afterwards, he began to extract the bone marrow from the Judicator and, after some processing, placed it into Rico. As the transplant took place, he could see Rico's chest wound close into fresh flesh before his eyes, amazing the supervising surgeons. Rico awoke, then and there, startling them even more. He and Edward pried the tubes out of his body as he sat up.

“Man, I feel like a whole new person,” Rico remarked, “what did you do?”

“I transplanted Jennifer's adrenal gland into your body, then I used the special stem cells in your would-be assailant's body to supercharge your body's healing process.”

As Edward escorted Rico outside into the afternoon sunlight, he informed him of the situation with the creatures that had burst through from underground and of the one man who might have answers.

“I know Javi and how to contact him. See, I helped him discover the truth of a dynasty who once ruled this country.”

“I figured you two ran into each other, it's a small country.” Edward commented. Rico laughed again.

Later, Edward had flown off to an isle to the south-east of Solis, where he detected Riri had landed.

He touched down on the island. In amongst the grass he saw Riri still in her armour.

“Ugh, could you just leave me alone?” Riri said anxiously to him.

“I know, Danvers' defection is a bitter pill to swallow, but I'm sure we can take her on together. You, me and the rest of her fellow Birdforce members,” he said, trying to assure her.

“Birdforce don't want me, not after what I did at Zona Uno.”

“Ah, well I won't ask and you don't have to tell me what happened there.” Edward said as his armour receded into a bodysuit. He added, “you're only human, after all.”

“And I hate it. I hate being human and weak,” she said bitterly. “I wanna be powerful, like you and Stark.”

“No. No, you don't. Power, particularly the obsession with it, can be alienating. It can turn one cruel, or cold. It can eat away at one's good nature.”

“I'm already alienated. I've already seen how cruel the world can be, I got sick of hiding in my mother's basement.” As she said this, Edward felt a spark of realisation.

“So you brought the basement with you.” Edward said as he walked closer to her, she shoved him away.

“This...” she motioned to herself. “...is not a basement!”

“Then why are you in it all the time?” he asked her, as he insisted, “take it off, the air's great here.”

“No!”

“C'mon! You did it in my house.” She turned her head, Edward seemed to think she was blushing. “We're all alone here”. She looked around, she looked over the grass and saw no boats in the rocky orange waves around them. Her helmet folded away, Edward could see that she looked everywhere except at his face. Edward slowly wrapped his arms around her. She pushed him back again, holding him at arm's length. She saw his lips contort into a grimace, she took this as a cue to pull him into a lip lock. He could feel her rapid pulse and, to his surprise, her tongue as it forced its way into his mouth. As their tongues wrapped around each other, she gently forced him onto the ground and straddled him, planting her feet on the ground.

As the sun began to slowly sink, Edward's pulse rose. Riri's armour began to recede into the green apparatus on her chest, revealing only a red sports bra underneath and her bare skin.

“W-wait,” Edward said nervously. He clenched his left hand. A red gem glinted on the back of his hand and a red miasma flowed out form underneath him, turning the grass underneath him into a blanket. “A-are you sure?”

“I want you inside me already!” Riri groaned. Edward's bodysuit receded, exposing his bare skin. Riri reached down to his groin and guided his erection into her. They both let out a sigh of pleasure as he slid inside. After a few slow rocking motions, she quickly began to hasten her pace which sent a wave of intense pleasure through the two of them. Edward gripped her waist tightly in an attempt to slow her movements but to no avail as she had been lost in ecstasy. He grabbed her ankle and pulled it towards his shoulder, he then flipped the two of them.

“I'd prefer it if you didn't have your feet on display. Let me take the lead, show you the ropes, so to speak.” Edward, still inside of her, began to thrust slowly. As he gently kissed her neck he placed a hand on her breast and gently massaged it. Riri let out a moan as her eyes rolled back into her head. He hastened his motions, spurred on by her vocal responses. He grinned as he watched her grit her teeth and squeeze her eyes shut. He leaned into her ear and whispered, “do you know what I'd like? Your hand on my ass.” His skin tingled as he felt her hand run down his back. Her hand rubbed his cheek slowly. He gritted his teeth as her moans grew louder, she then let out an inhaled gasp as her whole body shuddered. One hand of her's gripped his cheek tightly as she squeezed his wrist with the other. He felt himself begin to throb inside of her. A few moments later he rolled onto his back. The two breathed heavily as the chill of the young night fell on them.--

Some time later, the two had re-deployed their armours. They found see Rico Rodriguez had commandeered a boat leaping over waves towards them.

“I have good news; Javi believes that shifting the arches that the tendrils have gotten tangled under will sever them,” Rico said with a beaming smile.

“I don't know about Greenheart here but I'm gonna need more exposition.” Edward complained.

An armoured Black Hand soldier sat up, entering their view. They took of their helmet, revealing a familiar face, but one that had suffered burns. It was Gabriela Morales.

“Isla De Los Annilos' centre has three stone rings, each are many dozens of meters in diameter. The arches, of which each has four, are locking mechanisms. Someone needs to get to the grotto on the edge of the structure to raise them, after which they can be shifted. Shifting them will sever the super-organism's tendrils, after which you can attack the core.”

Edward and Riri slowly nodded their heads and then climbed into the boat. Edward noticed a jetpack on Rico's back. Gabriela's obliged them with a repeat of the plan.

“So, Gabby,” Rico began, the name seemed to irritate her but she didn't protest, “The Black Hand, funded by goodness-knows-who, fights in Solis for months. You hire some monsters who proceed to steal your precious weather machines out from under you. Finally, their leader unleashes a horde of deadly plants and bugs from hell that make Australia's weeds and critters look like ladybugs and butterflies.”

Edward chuckled at this comment.

“Is there a point to your lecture?” Gabriela asked, completely unamused.

“I mean, you've kinda made a mess of things. At what point do you finally admit Solis is a lost cause and pack your bags?”

“We're just following your example, Rico; taking a metaphorical wrecking ball to your home country to place it back in the right hands. I thought you'd agree it's a just cause.”

Edward, voice raised, interrupted the two, “What **will** it take? Someone dropping a nuke on the place? I swear, you guys won't stop until the whole country's on fucking fire!”

“I was just playing devil's advocate. By the way, was that a threat, Eddie?” Gabriela asked.

Edward stretched out his arm. The other's looked at his arm in bafflement for several moments before a metallic humming noise filled the air. Then, Stormcaster flew into his hand. He then thrust it into the air and, on cue, a lightning bolt struck the head, startling the three. Finally, he then gently placed it upside-down next to Gabriela and wordlessly invited her to lift it. She wrapped one hand around its handle and pulled, but it did not budge. She yanked it once more before she gave up.

Their vessel turned to face the isle. The cloudy dome, which had previously covered just the centre of the landmass, had now expanded to engulf it in its entirety. 

“Alright, here's the plan, it's a simple one; I stop the boat at the south-east of the isle, that's where you two get off,” Rico said to his armoured passengers. “Your jobs are to draw their fire while I circle to the north-east, when I give you the cue we each shift one ring. I'll take the outermost circle.”

“Take your pick, Greenheart, and I'll take the last.” Edward said to her.

The boat slid to a halt allowing Riri to fly off. Edward generated a block of ice next to the seacraft and covered it in a yellow glow, he then hit it twice and climbed onto the opposite side. The yellow dispelled and the block of ice immediately shot off, launching Edward into the dome behind Riri. Greenheart herself was immediately beset upon by a swarm of large insects. She forced them away with a blast from modules on the palms of her hands. Edward flew in, his block of ice crashed leaving a small crater between the innermost rings. A rumble in the ground accompanied the rising of the arches. Edward rushed to the innermost ring while Riri flew to the middle. Rico flew out from the grotto and shot out a tether at the outer ring. Rico then shot his end of the tether to a stone tower nearby, the length of cord tensed up and began to shift the structure, choking the tendril. Riri followed suit, she attached herself to an arch by her hands and used boosters on her boots to force it into moving. Finally, Edward cast the yellow glow of Stasis on his ring and gave it a solid whack with his hammer, sending the arch sliding as the glow dispelled.

The ground shook violently for a moment. A gigantic bud burst out from the structure in the centre, a large swarm of large insects spewed forth with it. Edward recognised the bud from his skirmish inside the other cloudy dome.

“I fought this before!” Edward hastily said as he swatted at attacking bugs. He clenched his right hand, which activated the Omnitrix on its back. A cloak enveloped him as his armour changed to a black and dark blue colour scheme.

“And Javi told me about those things; they have three armoured plates around the soft tissue.” Rico interrupted him. Edward sighed as the grappling-hook-wielding Spaniard continued, “I'll peel a plate, one of you, I dunno, do something to it.”

“Rir- I mean, Greenheart... that's you. I got something that should thin out these damned bugs.” Edward said.

Riri extended her lightning-spewing weapon, a few sparks of electricity gathered around a swarm nearby, the sparks gathered in intensity until they became a consistent stream of lightning crashing down from above. Edward sent out streams of frosted air as he sought himself a high vantage point. He flew atop a tower and exposed his shoulders, multiple spikes protruded from each one. Rico shot out a length of wire which pulled him across the radius of the area. Edward's spikes shot forth and spread out above the battlefield, blanketing it in fog. Contrary to Edward's expectations, the icy particles quickly turned to steam as they came in contact with the flying insects. Rico shot out another cable, pulling back on a plate on the large bud, Riri took this chance to aim her lightning gun at the exposed tissue, of which had a strange red glow. Dozens of the flying fauna clustered above it and bore the strike of lightning. Annoyed but undisturbed, Riri proceeded to launch herself like a missile into the exposed glowing mass. As she penetrated the bud it exploded into bright fiery spectacle. Riri, covered in flames, came tumblign out the other side. Edward shouted her name as he flew over to her.

He blanketed her in more frost in an attempt to quench the flames. He hoisted her into his arms and flew off towards the grotto. He watched as parts of her armour bulged out and extended like veins throughout her body. The ground began to shake even more as several tendrils burst forth alongside another, even larger and spiked bud. This new bud had a tendril wrapped tightly around it. The others had armoured Black Hand vehicles in their choking tight grasp. Edward stepped out of the grotto, spraying more frost to create a wall of ice to protect Riri from the swarm.

“Edward! My friend just contacted me, he believes that if we force the other tendrils to retract, It'll cause the one protecting the core to recede as well.”

“He's just relaying what the ancient civilisation wrote, right?” Edward asked.

“Of course. We should focus on the task at hand, now. Bad news is, as you can see, that these tentacle things have some Black Hand artillery on them, good news is; they're prone to exploding. See where I'm going?”

“I reckon I do.” Edward said. He tried to throw lightning from Stormcaster at one only to see it intercepted by the swarm, each spontaneously burned into a cloud of fire as the lightning struck them. Rico tethered together two cannons from two different armoured vehicles, the two plant-like limbs then were forced into each other, firing wildly all the time until their vehicles both exploded. The retreated underground, leaving a trail of flames. Edward glided near another seized armour and tossed his hammer into it, one burst of electricity later and that vehicle also exploded, leaving five more vehicle-wielding limbs remaining. Rico took to the air and steered himself to another limb, the apparatus on his back shot out a volley of missiles towards the tank in it's grasp, causing it to go up in roaring flames as they impacted. Edward spewed ice at one limb, to no avail as the ice turned to steam on impact. Rico reeled himself onto a tank and quickly stuck an explosive to it before rocketing off and heading towards another limb, he shot out more missiles and pulled the lever of a trigger, sending two more tendrils into fiery oblivion. He landed on another tank only to be shot off when the other remaining limb's vehicle fired upon him. He flew and tumbled along the ground. Edward rushed over to him.

“Oof, some upgrade, huh?” Rico groaned as he tried to keep cool.

“That's not the upgrade,” Edward remarked as he extended his hammer, “touch it.”

Rico, still on his back, raised his hand and placed it on Edward's weapon. He began to convulse as streaks of lightning shot down his arm. His torso lurched upwards as his skin turned grey with light blue streaks. His clothing tore as the muscles on his arms and legs began to bulge. The two were sent flying as a blast went off in the ground near them. Rico landed on his feet and shot out his hook at the attacking tank. Once he set foot on it he placed the cannon in an arm-lock and squeezed it shut. The tendril tried to fire it again only to be blown apart.

The tendril guarding the spiked bud receded with the one that suffered the backfire. More tendrils holding armoured vehicles burst through the ground along with more giant bugs.

“That's it, I've had it with these bastard demons!” Edward growled. He clenched his left hand and a purple glow coursed through him and his hammer. He raised it high before sending out streaks of purple lightning, tearing through the horde of insects. He fell to his knees as he felt his body begin to heat up. He took a deep breath. He exhaled steam through his helmet's vents and thrust Stormbreaker into the air again. An enormous bolt of lightning struck the bud and a blindingly bright light flashed out along with a deafening roar.

Edward's senses knew nothing but searing heat for an indeterminate time before his sight and hearing returned. He shrugged of a pile of rubble as he stood up. Around him he could see nothing but smoke and vegetation, burnt or still burning. He struggled up a blackened hill until he reached the top, from that vantage point he could see more clouds of rising smoke on Solis' mainland along with more roaring fires. He muttered 'what the fuck' to himself as he took in the devastation.

A gold-helmeted man with red and blue robes walked up beside him.

“Do you know how this happened?” the robed man asked.

“Yeah, you bastards did this.” Edward snarled.

“Those so-called demons simply laid dormant, our commander deigned to show them the light of day once more. We knew someone like you would tear through them so we introduced a Red Lantern's core into it. Turns rage into fire, seems the demons had more than their fair share of anger. Quite clever, our scheme, some plant explosives, we exploded plants... or should I say, you did. Our next target is Medici, for your ears only...”

Edward swung his hammer at the other man but it passed through him like air, he then faded into nothing. Riri landed next to him, still armoured, the bulging veins had gone.

“What happened?” she asked.

“I burned Solis,” Edward said, his voice devoid of hope, “and now I have to burn Medici too.”  
Chapter 10: Buried Bavarium

Edward stood inside the grounds of a castle structure situated next to Medici's capital. Several armed guards had their weapons pointed at him. A middle-aged woman in a formal suit paced back and forward nearby. She came to a stop near him and looked at him in the eyes.

She asked, “And how do you plan to extract all this bavarium? Some thousand tons, if our estimates are correct.”

“Do you remember when the world first learned about the Sky Fortresses? One aimed a beam of energy at the mainland that could've sunk the whole nation. Mine is less powerful, but will still destroy much of the mainland, particularly the east. You must understand that this was the inevitable endgame for certain forces that have wanted it since DiRavello fell.”

“Ever since those Eden Mecha were pilfered I've received no end of grief from the European Union. They won't shut up about my bavarium deposits and how I should bring in foreign military to guard the mines,” the woman continued, she became bitterly sarcastic, “that's not suspicious at all.”

“With all due respect Madam President, they'd only care about your suspicion if the were being subtle, of which putting their military in your country is **not**.”

The President glared at him.

“Sorry, that was supposed to be funny... or at least sympathetic.”

“I hope you bail me out better than you bail yourself out,” she remarked.

The president's guards escorted him to the castle gate. A garbage truck backed through the gate, Edward opened a portal on the ground behind it. The truck tilted the container and poured azure-speckled rocks through it.

The next day, a warning was broadcast all throughout the nation informing the populace of a brewing superstorm. Ships of all sizes headed between Medici's mainland and the islands to its south.

Edward and Riri stood in a room in the underside of Edward's Ark II ship, the latter still in her armour. The two had been separating the ore from the rest of the minerals along with putting the finishing touches on the extraction lazer.

“What's your plans for your half of the bavarium?” Edward asked her.

“Secondary generators, micro-factories, more efficient thrusters,” she answered, from the green device on her chest she projected a hologram of a bulky and angular armour.

“Where's the helmet?” Edward pointed out.

“Don't worry about that. Lets talk about why you think decimating a country is the best thing for it.”

Edward sighed heavily before reiterating, “Medici will inevitably be thrown into war for its bavarium, what I'm doing should only end in them losing their land, more than a tenth, and no lives.”

“'More than a tenth' is a lot of land.”

Edward began to walk up to her, “You said decimate, which means reduce by one tenth. I wish that was the case but the bavarium is too far spread out,” by the way, what are you hiding? I saw what looked like engorged veins spread out over your armour when you got set on fire,” Edward covered his left hand in white armour before thrusting his fingers in the edges of Riri's faceplate. He tore it off to see no head underneath, the reveal of which took him off guard. “Please tell me you cloaked your organic compounds... somehow.”

“No.” she replied tersely.

A whole in the floor opened up underneath her, ejecting her into the vacuum of space where she made her hasty exit. Edward called out “Alight”, hastily deploying his armour. He followed her though the opening but stopped as he stood outside. He looked out into the endless and dark expanse at the Mediterranean Sea. “President Manuela, how's the evacuation going? I may have to accelerate our plans.”

“Dammit, you said your end was airtight. We still have many holdouts to deal with down here. Your storm better look good, but not **too** good,” the Medici commander-in-chief, replied, testy.

Edward clenched his left hand, crimson lines extended from his fist onto his whole armour. “One superstorm, coming up!” he announced as he concentrated on the waters north of the island nation.

Over several hours the calm winds of Medici had picked up into a fierce tempest. Darkness fell as pitch black clouds choked out the light of the sun. The darkened fury scared the remaining populace into fleeing southwards. Edward opened another hole and extended the extractor laser through it. Edward send out a message asking for a life-sign reading of north Medici, he received the all-clear and powered up the extractor.

Edward clenched his left hand again, replacing the crimson lines with dark-blue. Edward portalled himself to a distant and uninhabited island to the south-west of Medici, dozens of barrels painted read sat with rusting vehicles. He activated the extractor, sending a beam of bright blue crashing down onto the island in the distance, a few moments later the sound of crashing impact reached him.

“An effortless manipulation, I just had to breath on your strings and you danced for me,” a demonically growling voice said. Edward twisted his head to the side to see the armoured and clawed man who perforated him not-too-long ago. “Your heist lacks... subtlety.”

“You assume it's a heist, how cute,” Edward said, eschewing condescension for barely-concealed scathing.

“Still, did you think we were really interested in Medici?” the Clawed Commander asked.

“If you continue to act coy, I'll rip the answers I'm after from your mind,” Edward threatened.

“You'd violate my mind?”

“You pretty much walked up to my front yard and violated me with your claws, then you sacked two countries. If raking through your brain matter puts a stop to this then I'll do it.”

The Commander deployed his bloody claws. Edward sent the dozens of barrels dotted around the island flying into the armoured man. He then used his powers over space to constrict the resulting explosion into an undulating ball of bright fire. His opponent simply walked out of the fireball.

“There's fighting fire with fire and then there's this, like tossing a lit match on encroaching lava. Pathetic.”

Edward clenched his right hand, drawing Necrofriggian aspects into his armour. He sent out a stream of icy air at the commander.

“Nice, this is more like it,” the Commander responded, adding, “but the destructive potential of heat is incomprehensibly greater than the cold could ever negate.”

“Ice has me,” Edward declared, “and with that it has a chance.”

“You're a snowball in hell, child.”

Edward shot out more ice and as he did he broadcast, “You're goddamn right. So long as there are fires there'll be people like me fighting to quell them and this snowball isn't thawing any time soon. The world needs to learn to chill, and you're top of the list.” He then moved the infernal sphere to engulf the armoured commander again. His concentration waned, causing the fire to escape and roar out into the air.

The commander stretched out his arms as the red core on his chest began to glow. From the core shone a wide beam of light. A weapon resembling a gun with a glowing red barrel materialised in his hands, several pipes shot out from his right arm and attached themselves to the back of his weapon. He then pointed it at Edward and shot out a stream of fire at him.

Edward clenched both of his hands, changing the lines on his armour to a light blue. The rest of his armour took on a fiery colour scheme. He spewed out an orange plasma against the commander's stream of fire. A flash of steam sent out a wave of force that knocked the two on their backs. Undeterred, the commander leapt back onto his feet and rushed at the still-flattened Ed, who extended a hand upwards and towards his adversary's head.

“Son-of-a-bitch,” Edward gasped, “Is that an Infinity GemStone?”

Thoughts poured from the commander's head into Ed's. 'Idiot, it's an Infinity Loop. Master Trigiston has granted me the power to transmit data back in time.' Visions of the Claw Commander fighting a blond man in red, blue, and white. Edward recognised this man as Steve Rogers, aka the Super-Soldier. The commander plunged a metal claw into Steve's heart, killing him quickly.

“Well you're a hell of a fucking cocktail; let see here, you're an alternate version of the Dark Claw, who killed the Super-Soldier, you got your hand on a Red Core which makes you part Iron Lantern, sorta.”

The clawed Commander held his helmet as he staggered backward. He lifted his head protection off and tossed it onto the sandy ground. His revealed head had thick black and greying hair. His skin had many blemishes and wrinkles and his eyes were severely bloodshot, more red than white.

Another vision flashed before Edward. The old man, at this point lacking the many grey hairs or wrinkles, stood before an enormous cloaked demon with four eyes, Trigiston.

“Please,” he begged to the demon, “If there's any way I can go back to that moment then I'll take it.”

Edward concentration was broken by a burning sensation. His senses had been overwhelmed by burning. Logan lumbered over to his discarded helmet. “Suprise,” he began, “you actually reached into my mind, but I can't let you stay in there.”

Several projectiles flew down and buried themselves in the sand, on landed under Logan's helmet and let off an explosion underneath, sending it flying into the water. Over on a nearby peak landed Riri's armour and an equally metallic but more human young woman. Logan aimed his flamethrower in their direction but several more blasts sent sand flying into his eyes. Riri's armour sent down a streak of lightning directly onto Logan's head. The streak burned his face and knocked him backwards, he remained on his two feet however.

Edward shed the cloak from his Necrofriggian form to rid himself of the flames. Parts of his armour had been blackened from the heat. Riri's armour flew down and landed next to him.

“Who's your friend?” he asked.

“They're not my friend. You're not doing so hot, or maybe too hot,” she remarked to his bemusement. She then turned her back to him, the armour then peeled away to reveal its hollow interior. “Get inside, keep your armour on,” she requested.

Edward hesitated for a moment before he inserted his left foot into her's. She raised their left feet so her armour would easily surround him, they then repeated this for his right foot. Her armour's front then leaned into and began to cover his, as it did the spikes on his elbows and knees receded, his shoulders contracted as her helmet receded. The armour transformed to become less sleek and more boxy. Her armour finished covering his back as it formed into barrels and missile pods. Her armour had completely enveloped his and as it did, azure circles lit up on his torso and thighs.

“Like it? After all that nanotech you gave me, the bavarium ended up being underwhelming,” Riri said.

“What'd you-” Edward began to ask before he remembered that Logan still stood before him, “Never mind, we've got some ass to kick, first. So what have we got?”

Without skipping a beat, firearms deployed from all around his forearms. He admired the weapons that had just appeared for a few moments before unloading a barrage on Logan, the artillery tore an innumerable quantity of gashes in his armour. An enraged Logan deployed his claws and rushed at Edward, who responded by launching himself by rockets in his legs and feet and blasting his face with the back-draft of one of the heel jets. The force knocked him back but he stayed on his feet. Edward clenched his fists, a metal plate attached themselves to them. A booster on his elbow fired and forced the fist into Logan's face, blood flew out from behind the point of impact. Ed took a step forward and threw another rocket-enhanced fist. He then grabbed Logan's armour by the collar and threw more punches into his face, mashing it into a crimson pulp. 

“Stop!” the metallic woman cried out with Riri's voice. Edward complied, he let go of Logan's collar. Logan fell onto his back. The metallic woman walked over to his location. As she neared him he could see that whatever metal skin she wore stuck to her skin so tightly that it looked exactly like her naked form. Her hair, however, no longer swayed in the wind.

“Wanna explain who you are?” Edward asked as he turned to face her.

“I'm Riri.”

Edward tilted his head a little.

“I had my green core inject a cocktail of nanomachines into me, about nine pints worth. Something went wrong between backing my brain up and recalling it back to my brain. Either the heat or the impact jarred the connection between the two. I feel... different.”

Edward's new armour receded into the green core that Riri used to wear. Edward detached it from his armour as he retracted that into his bodysuit. Edward then receded the right hand of his bodysuit, exposing his fractured arm. He reached out and touched her shoulder, he felt a slight chill. Riri just looked at his hand and then away.

“I need to go,” she said. Her legs reconfigured themselves into jets. Edward took several steps back, giving her space to launch. He sighed as she faded from sight.

…

Logan regained consciousness. In front of him he saw a boat sitting in a dry-dock in the middle of a vast room. There was no sign of a body of water nearby. He tried to shift himself but found his arms and legs would not move. A cloudy portal opened up near him.

“The Illuminati are coming here, aren't they?” a voice said from it.

“Maybe,” Logan mumbled.

“Cut the bullshit, not only is Amalgamated Justice in the capital nearby but now Rico's agency have both here and Solis surrounded. You know where you are, but I've disabled all the tracking devices on your armour so your achievement means about as much as Phyrrus’ victories.”

“You're right. Y'know, Solis, Medici, Sealand, Panau; they're all micronations that have existed for at least decades. But Vivacia just came out of nowhere about a decade ago, as both a landmass and as a state. Also, it happens to be almost impervious to their meddling. So when we successfully sacked Medici and Solis, our... uh, 'contacts' here decided we were worthy to go after the Fort Knox of fringe science facility raids; South Mesa, smack dab in the middle of Vivacia. I also know what that boat is and what's in it. It's the Borealis and within it is Aperture Science's magnum opus; the Borealis Teleport.”  
Epilogue One:

A redheaded Asian man had just been thrown back into his prison. He noticed the top of the cistern of his toilet slightly askew. He lifted it to find a wooden box immersed in water. He lifted it out to see it covered in plastic wrap. He gnawed and tore the plastic off before opening it up. Inside were twelve octagonal stone talismans, each had a stylised animal painted on it, an ox, a rabbit, a dog, a mouse, a snake, a sheep, a pair of tigers, a monkey, a pig, a rooster, a rabbit and a dragon.

A rolled up paper fell out, he unrolled it and read it;

'To Hak-foo,

A return to greatness is but one kill away....

• From Daolon Wong'

Below the letter was a set of co-ordinates and a picture...

...a picture of Edward Orson.

Epilogue Two: Furry Friends; A Spirits Prelude

The last thing they remember, it was 2006, to Earth anyway. They stayed behind on their home isle as their world faced a construct that would easily wreck. One flash in the distance later and their world had disappeared into white light. When they came to, they found themselves in a jungle. In the distance they found a high cliff, a creature consisting of a ball of light and several enormous crystalline wings floated nearby. The pair were no strangers to danger, so they headed off toward it.

A half-hour into their trudge through the jungle, they heard a rustle in the trees.

“Who's that!?” one of them shouted, “come out and fight us! Ya wuss!”

“Shoosh,” the other whispered.

The rustling came closer, they could now hear that it was two different creatures moving amongst the trees. To figures rushed out either side of them; the larger one was a gorilla wearing a red tie, the smaller was a monkey wearing a red shirt and cap.

“Diddy!” the bear exclaimed, ecstatically.

“Hmm?!” the monkey replied with confusion.

The ape grunted, also confused. The bear's partner, a red breegull in the blue bag on Banjo's back pecked his head once and asked, “You know these furry losers?”

“Gu-huh, I do indeed, Kazooie! Diddy and I fought a wizard pig a few years ago,” he said.

“What wizard pig? Wait, Wizpig? That was my cousin you're talking about! 'Uncle Diddy'!” the monkey realised.

Diddy told them about how he and the ape, Donkey Kong, just fell asleep a little while ago and just woke up in the strange jungle. Banjo and Kazooie recalled how their world, which was also Diddy and Donkey's world, had been destroyed. The two simians told them, to their confoundment, that form their perspective, the destruction happened while they were babies, thirteen years ago.

The monkey started to catch the bear and bird up when they remembered that they were heading to that winged glowing orb on the cliff. The two travelled up hills that looked like enormous steps and turned to make a beeline toward the cliff. On the way they met a yellow mouse-like animal with pointed ears tipped with black, a short human boxer, another human who wore a cool blue bodysuit and a bandana, a short blue robot that looked like a human and a circular yellow creature with plain black eyes that reminded Diddy of Kirby. As they made it to the cliff, they saw a whole crowd had made it there.

“Even more new people! That's gotta make about sixty-four of us, now. They'll make their move any moment now. When they do... don't let a single one get away,” a humanoid with metal boots and a fox-like face said.

“We'll each need to take down about ten!” a pretty looking knight with blue hair pointed out.

“Stow your fear!” A blonde princess said.

The floating orb of light began to float towards them as more strange people and other creatures joined the group on the cliff. It fired winding beams of bright yellow light. Each streak annihilated several members of the crowd. The cliff was now bare.

A five-pointed yellow star crashed onto the cliff, from the explosion leapt a marshmallow-pink creature with big eyes and red shoes. It looked out over the cliff at the bizzare mishmash of a world before it and at the winged creature, which had now encased itself in three shields of energy....

**TO BE CONTINUED**

**Author's Note:**

> Epilogue One leads into the next story, based on Jackie Chan Adventures.
> 
> Epilogue Two leads into my adaptation of Super Smash Bros Ultimate's story mode; World of Light.


End file.
